


Rein of Terror

by tsukinofaerii



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Blood, Crack, Death, Derby Days AU, Fuck You Jeff Davis, Glitter, Gore, Jeff Davis is a Horse, Magical Pony Rancher Werewolves, Minor Character Death, Multi, Parody, Rainbows, Werewolves, attempted murder most fowl, bright and pretty things, horses and ponies, unicorns/pegasus/etc, unkindness to Jeff Davises, unkindness to animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3259199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinofaerii/pseuds/tsukinofaerii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hales are a werewolf pack of magical race horse ranchers who breed, raise, train and race every magical horse variety imaginable. While on one last hurrah before college, Scott, Stiles and Allison happen to be trespassing when one of the Hales' prized breeding stallions, Jeff Davis, gets out of containment and all hell breaks loose. Hell which, of course, is blamed entirely on them. As a result the threesome end up spending their summer shoveling rainbow unicorn glittershit under the gentle-yet-terrifying eyebrow of Derek Hale. As if that weren't bad enough, Jeff Davis is still on the loose, and he's on a mission: a mission of murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Unattached Opening Episodes

**Author's Note:**

> The amazing art for this fic is by yue_xi; [you can find it here](http://soistalune.tumblr.com/post/109725009601/my-poly-big-bang-art-for-rein-of-terror-by). I've linked some pieces here and there as well. Clicky clicky!
> 
> Many thanks to ratherastory and to Valtyr for giving this an editing poke for me. I immediately made their work useless with a long series of additions, but thank you for trying. [Derby Days is a pony farming app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com2us.derbyday.normal.freefull.google.global.android.common&hl=en) that's possibly more addictive than is really healthy. If you like Farmville cute overload, you might want to give it a looksee!
> 
> This fic started as a joke, progressed as a way to vent my annoyance at Season 3A and 3B, and resolved into an entry in Polyamory Big Bang. It's utterly ridiculous and, yes, not particularly kind to Jeff Davis. To the best of my knowledge, Jeff Davis is not, in fact, a particularly unattractive alicorn hell-bent on murder, mayhem and Macy's. Probably. I've never met him, after all.

[ ](http://soistalune.tumblr.com/post/109725009601/my-poly-big-bang-art-for-rein-of-terror-by)

Derek woke to the sound of [Jeff Davis](http://yue-ix.parakaproductions.com/teenwolf/2015/jeffdavis_calm.jpg) screaming. 

For a minute, he considered rolling over and just letting the horse wear himself out. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd raised the roof in the middle of the night, and it wouldn't be the last. There was really no hope that Jeff Davis would ever get better at not being a complete asshole. 

Memory started seeping back in through the layers of sleep, a vision of burned out locks and Jeff Davis wandering the woods waiting for a mountain lion to eat him. Just a day ago someone had tried to steal what was, inexplicably, Three Moon Ranch's most reliable stallion. They'd failed—somehow—but there was no reason to think they wouldn't try again.

It still wasn't quite enough to make him dig himself out, though. It was Jeff Davis, after all. He'd been a troublemaker when he was born, forcing Derek to participate in his very first breech-birth and going on to traumatize Derek for life when he tried to run over Derek's first girlfriend less than a year later. If the damned horse didn't throw incredibly talented, sweet-tempered, beautiful foals, Derek would have cheerfully sold him for dog food years ago. Letting him be stolen was probably kinder than that. The loss of a million carrots of horse didn't seem like such a bad deal. 

At least, not until he heard his door creak open and a shoe was thrown at his head. It slammed into the pillow, missing by an inch. Derek yelped and curled up, hiding under the blankets, but the second shoe hit with laser-sight accuracy. 

"You're the one on Jeff duty this week, asshole," Laura snapped from the doorway. Her voice was still thick with sleep. Not so much, however, that he couldn't pick the growl out of it. "Don't make me get mom."

Derek groaned and pushed down the blankets, taking a second to shove his feet into some nearby sneakers that he was pretty sure were a matched pair. Almost positive, anyway. "I'm going, I'm—" He paused, blinking out the window. His bedroom happened to face the front, and from it he had a clear view of Jeff Davis and his holding pen. The same pen that had been torn apart in the attempted horse-napping. The same pen, in fact, that currently had two lights bouncing around inside it. 

"Shit. Shit shit _fuck_." Derek threw open the window and leaned out. Once he was looking, it was easy to see the three people racing for their lives while Jeff Davis did his level best to pound them into the dirt. For once, the damned horse was being useful. The thieves were back after all, and now that he was awake, Derek actually cared. Damn it. "Laura, call the police."

Before she had a chance to ask questions—questions like why he didn't do the calling—Derek climbed out the window and leaped across the overhang under his window. His claws popped out automatically as he landed, digging into the dirt to give him traction when the mud tried to send him to his ass. In his room Laura was still grumbling things about uncooperative brothers, and how the middle child was supposed to be the _good one damn it_. Derek waved at her before taking off at a two-legged trot toward the enclosure. 

In the enclosure, the thieves had finally realized they couldn't outrun a horse. They nearly broke their fool necks climbing hay bales while Jeff Davis trapped them like a cat at a mouse hole. Derek let them suffer while he sniffed around for more information. Two males, one female, nothing surprising there. Relatively healthy, though that wouldn't last long around Jeff Davis. There weren't any vehicle smells nearby, which was weird. Had they thought they'd just _ride_ the horse to safety? Three of them on an alicorn that couldn't even fly? Maybe they had a transit spell. There was a hint of something strange under the rain smell—a sharp spice that tingled in his nose, laced through with the living, fresh scent of magic at work. It could have been a prefab spell.

Almost Derek hoped they hadn't thought that far ahead, and the spell was actually an anti-impotence potion or something. Dumb thieves were so much better to have to deal with than mere unlucky ones. Definitely more amusing to watch. 

Amusing or not, he had to do something. The horse was going frantic, and it wouldn't be long before he hurt himself trying to climb the hay bales and get them. Besides, the police were almost there; he could hear their cars approaching fast. Fun time was over. 

Moving as smoothly as he could in the mud, Derek slipped through the gate and whistled. Jeff Davis snorted, dancing away. His hooves flashed, sparks flying where they hit the ground. Derek approached from the side, holding out one hand with his palm up and cupped as if he were hiding a treat. What would have usually at least gotten him at least a playful mauling only made Jeff Davis beat his hooves harder, prancing like one of the hinds in a circus, completely focused on his quarry. 

"Come _on_ ," Derek muttered, whistling again. Jeff Davis whinnied, cutting sideways to canter in a tight circle. After a couple of rounds, he finally seemed to realize that he wasn't going to find a way up to the roof and wheeled, clearing the fence in a single leap to bolt for the road. 

Groaning, Derek put his head in his hands. There were spells on the property line that would make sure horses didn't escape, but catching a loose one was still a pain in the ass. Catching a loose Jeff Davis was the worst. Blood was going to be spilled. Probably his. 

At least he had an outlet for his frustration. Clearing his throat, Derek stepped up to the edge of the barn. He let his eyes turn gold as he craned his head back to look up. "What the hell did you do to my horse?"

Three heartbeats stuttered in panic, rubber-soled shoes scraping against the painted tin roof. Probably thinking about jumping and risking the broken leg. 

One of them stuck their head over the edge. "Hey dude, your horse just tried to kill us. Have some pity, would you?" the guy called down. It was a man—maybe a boy, he had the voice of someone who hadn't quite finished growing yet. Against the faintly-lit night sky,his head was a mess of spikes and what was probably straw and dirt. 

The woman joined him at the edge, loose hair falling around her face to hide most of it in shadow. "We're sorry!" she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth so it echoed. She pressed so close to her fellow thief's shoulder that they were mostly one large chunk of darkness. "We didn't know the horse would be in there!" 

"Which is _really unsafe_!" Yet a third person popped up at the edge, on the other side of the first. _Like whack a mole_ , Derek thought, flexing his claws. "There was all sorts of dropped stuff and holes and the horse could have broken a leg and died!"

"Yeah!" the other two chimed in, with the immediate harmony of long-time partners in crime. 

"You should feel ashamed!"

"That poor—horse? Thing. Poor _thing_!" 

"Maybe I would, if we'd left him in there. When I bedded him down for the night, he was in the stud barn. The barn that _you_ took him out of." Derek crossed his arms, planting his feet wider in a way that he thought made him look more authoritative. It made him feel more authoritative, at least. A pair of police cruisers were finally pulling up the drive. Their blue lights bounced off the thieves' skin and hair, capturing the exact moment they looked up and realized what was happening. "Which you'd better have a good excuse for when the police question you."

As one their heartbeats went from panicked to absolute terror, that special skip-beat-thud sound that a deer made when it froze in front of on-coming headlights. The middle one ducked back, and the girl dropped down flat against the roof, covering her head. Only the last one, with a head of fluffy baby hair, didn't bother trying to hide. 

The cruisers followed the road around and parked close by, splashing to a stop. Sheriff Stilinski stepped out of his car, shrugging on a plastic poncho. He smelled like exhaustion, french fries, and way too much coffee. His two deputies from the other car trailed him like ducklings, hanging back as he approached Derek.

"Mr. Hale," the Sheriff smiled professionally. "I didn't expect to be talking to you again so soon." 

"It's mutual, sir." Derek held out his hand for a quick shake, and ignored the odd expression it put on the Sheriff's face. Shaking was one of those wyr customs that he'd managed to catch on to. Mostly. It didn't exactly come naturally to werewolves to hand over their front paws. "I think Jeff Davis caught our thieves for us."

"We're not thieves!" the fluffy-haired one yelled, leaning forward. His hand slipped on the roof, and it took some serious scrambling to keep his balance.

" _Scott_?" Derek had never seen Sheriff Stilinski do _exhausted_ before. He rubbed his face, letting his head fall back to look upward. "What are you— Don't tell me Stiles is up there. Just. Don't."

"He won't," the first one said, peeking out over the edge. "Hi, Dad. Thought you were on the desk tonight. You know, like the _doctor told you to_." 

"Let's just say that the problems of a nice, established, _well-connected_ family like the Hales tend to get my full attention." The Sheriff squinted. "There's three of you, isn't there? The call said three. Allison?" 

The girl waved, smiling too brightly for honesty. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Stilinski!" 

"You know these people?" Derek asked, looking back and forth between the Sheriff and the... probably not thieves. Probably. He wasn't willing to let the possibility go completely yet.

"The one in the middle is my personal hellion, and the other two just get into trouble with him." A complicated frown twisted the Sheriff's face as he looked up. "I want you three down from there _now_ , and then you're going to tell me why I shouldn't arrest you for trespassing on private property, B&E and whatever else I can find in the books. Plaid on a Thursday, maybe, I don't think that one was ever repealed." 

"You'd have to arrest yourself, I know what you wore last summer!" the Sheriff's son called back, but the three suspects seemed to be actually trying to find a way down since most of the hay bales had been decimated. Derek considered telling them about the gutter-window sill-barrel method, but bit his tongue. At the very least, they'd woken him up from a pretty good sleep and caused him to have to chase down Jeff Davis in the rain. The little revenges were sometimes the sweetest. 

The two deputies seemed to take some sort of silent cue and slipped off casually, heading for the main house. His mother watched from the porch, wrapped in a fluffy robe. From the smell of it, Peter was making some of his famous hot chocolate. The deputies were no doubt eager to take advantage of Hale generosity. 

Not that Derek could blame them. He'd rather be drinking Peter's chocolate than standing out in the rain in his pajamas. In fact, he'd rather be almost anywhere else. Water had soaked through his sneakers, making his toes squelch every time he shifted his weight, and his pajama pants were close to dragging down his hips from the weight of the water in them. So _someone_ would have to pay.

They waited while the kids—and Derek was getting more and more certain that that was what they were, _kids_ —figured out how to reach ground level. It seemed to involve an overwhelming amount of bickering and fumbling. It wasn't _that_ dark out, but they acted like they couldn't see a thing, even slipping dramatically when their footholds missed. 

Finally, they were standing in front of Derek and the Sheriff, shame-faced and huddled together, mud smeared over every available surface of their skin. Like he'd expected, it was two boys and a girl. Derek's other guess had been right, too; they were _kids_ , at least a few years younger than him. Maybe still in high school. They all had that gawky, still-growing look, though it was mostly settled. One of the boys, the one that looked like his face had been God's own game of connect-the-dots, smelled most like the Sheriff. The other two, if he had to place them, smelled like medicinal magic and—weirdly—gunpowder. 

Crossing his arms, the Sheriff gave them a look that could have sent hardened criminals into fits of tears. "Now," he said sternly, "talk."

All at once, the three of them began babbling. Derek picked out something about an evil forest with flesh-eating monsters—not werewolves, we know werewolves are safe, two of them hastened to promise him—and evil monsters or horses and something about red eyes, which was completely ridiculous because Derek's mom had been in bed asleep and she was the only alpha for a hundred miles. 

"And then the horse ran away and _he_ ," the Sheriff's son said, waving his arms in the air, "showed up to call us horse thieves! Which, by the way, you have no evidence of and also, _rude_."

Derek snorted. "No evidence except that you and your little friends popped up on our property the _night after_ we had one attempted robbery, and the _very expensive_ horse that was nearly stolen just happens to be on the loose." 

The kid had the best asshole-on-duty expression that Derek had ever seen outside his own family. "Come on. I get fronting for the insurance company, but there's no way that thing is worth more than a couple hundred dollars. A grand, _tops_."

"I'm not even sure it's a horse," the other boy— _Scott_ , the Sheriff had called him—added helpfully. "One of its hooves was definitely cloven, and I don't think unicorn horns get that gnarled."

"Jeff Davis is one of the best breeders we have," Derek replied stiffly. Much as he hated the horse, he had to stand up for him. "He may not look like much, but he's a reliable stud. That's extremely rare in magical horse breeding." 

Laura's scent drifted on the wind just in time to keep Derek from jumping when she came from behind and said, "He's basically a collection of juxtaposed recessive genes held together with carrots and duct tape. They look horrible on him, but his foals are amazing." His big sister insinuated herself against the Sheriff's side with a bright smile and an umbrella. She'd taken time to get dressed, and looked a thousand times more adult and in control than Derek felt. "Deputies Conner and Mills are going to go file the report so you can deal with this personally. Mom says that if they're not thieves, we might as well all go inside to talk and call the other parents."

Scott went pale. "My mom's on shift at the hospital," he said hurriedly. "She can't come. She'll kill me if she has to leave work for this."

"My parents are out of town," the girl added, her heart skipping with the weight of the lie. "Out of the country. In France. Visiting relatives."

A cruel grin spread across Derek's lips. They smelled afraid. He liked that. "Then they won't like being called, will they? Teleportation magic is so expensive."

The Sheriff clasped his hands over the back of the two boys' necks, shoving them forward towards the house. "Come on, kiddos. Time to face the music. I promise that it won't hurt too much."

"I don't," Laura said, grinning wide enough to show her fangs.

Heads bowed, smelling of shame and defeat, they went.

* * *

Allison slouched down in the kitchen chair, clutching her glass of water with both hands and toeing a table leg. The table was pristine, polished and unscarred, completely unlike what she would have expected for werewolves. She, Scott and Stiles had been set a seat apart from each other, with Scott the Terrible Liar in the middle. So they couldn't talk and build up a story, the Sheriff had said. He was either being petty, or maybe he just knew Stiles. Eighteen years was a long time to learn how Stiles worked. 

At the far end of the gigantic Hale dinner table, the Sheriff and the werewolves had collected in a tight knot. They talked quietly enough that she couldn't quite make it out, other than the occasional laugh and sipped their cocoa pointedly. People guilty of trespassing, she'd been told, didn't get cocoa from Peter Hale's kitchen. One more reason that this entire mess was completely unfair.

Sometimes, Allison remembered that she was nineteen years old. She was an adult, capable of making adult choices and doing adult things. She could buy cigarettes, or travel, or hold a job if she wanted. Just because some people were older didn't mean that they had any power over her. 

The rest of the time, she felt like someone withholding cocoa was cruelty beyond measure. It was a hard line to walk.

Over by the adults Laura Hale kept trying to give them tight, suspicious glares that were ruined by the way she had to fight back a grin. It was like she could only hold off breaking into laughter by pretending to be angry. It could have been Allison's imagination, but she had the look of someone who liked a good laugh. And this? This was definitely something that would be laughed about in a few years, over the beers that they weren't yet legally old enough to drink.

Laura's brother, on the other hand, looked like the sort of person who might actually disintegrate into dust if he cracked a smile. There might have been some sort of curse involved. _His_ glares at them were one hundred and ten percent honest. From the angle of his eyebrows and his general air of growly-ness, there was definitely a special sort of grudge going. She didn't know what they'd done to get on his bad side, but he wasn't about to forgive easily. 

Scott's chair scraped the floor as he leaned over very, very slightly, disguising it as a slouch. "Do you think your parents will come back from France for this?" he asked in a whisper that might have been soft enough to pass by the humans, but the werewolves couldn't possibly miss it.

Sure enough, Derek turned his head sharply. His lip curled, baring a fang. Before he could speak, Laura dug her elbow into his side, working it in deep between his ribs. He grunted and turned his glare on her, but left them alone. Someone was on their side at least.

Allison leaned sideways and hissed, "I _lied_. And you bet my dad will come, at least." Her dad wasn't going to leave her to cool her heels in a werewolf's home. And even if he was willing to let her deal with her first brush with the law on her own, her mom wouldn't. No matter how much Allison wished she would, her mom wouldn't.

The doorbell rang. No one made a move to answer it, but a second later Melissa McCall stormed in, scrubs slightly damp from the rain. Scott _eeped_ , but all she did was point a threatening finger in his direction before joining the adults. 

"I'm in so much trouble," Scott moaned, covering his face and sinking down in honest dejection. 

Stretching out her leg under the table, Allison pressed it up against Scott's calf soothingly. The chair between them bounced back a few inches, but it gave her the space she needed. "We'll be okay," she promised. "What could they get on us, anyway?"

Stiles had been suspiciously quiet since they'd been brought in. After she spoke, he shook his head sharply. "Trespass," he said at normal volume. "Breaking and entering. Damage to property, if the horse gets hurt. And that's if they _don't_ try to pin the first attempted theft on us." 

High heels clicked on worn hardwood. "Good to see you know how serious this is," a familiar voice said from the doorway. "Allison, I wish I could say I'm surprised, but with the company you've been keeping it was only a matter of time before the authorities were contacted. I didn't, however, think you would be so stupid as to involve _werewolves_. The tabloids will love it, I'm sure."

Allison winced, but forced her shoulders back and her chin up. Her mother didn't respect weakness. "It's not Scott and Stiles' fault. I came because I wanted to. If you're going to be angry at anyone, be angry at me."

"Oh, believe me, I am." Victoria Argent strode sharply across the room, dropping her heavy purse to the table and draping her rain coat on the back of a chair. She was still in her business suit, tailored to perfection with her badge hanging around her neck on a lanyard. Allison wondered sourly if she'd been working, or if she'd put it on for added intimidation. "Sheriff Stilinski, Alpha Hale, Ms. McCall, if we can please get on with it, I'd like to take my daughter home."

"I imagine we all would like to go home, Marshall Argent," Scott's mom replied, razor sharp and controlled. "Unfortunately, it's not that simple."

"I'm honored to host the head of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs," Mrs. Hale said calmly, lips twisted in a closed smile. It echoed lessons Allison had had about diplomacy in supernatural predator species—smiling with the teeth bared was a threat. "Please have a seat. Would you like some cocoa? My brother is somewhat proud of his recipe." 

"I don't plan to be here that long." Pointedly, Allison's mom braced her hands on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. "Just tell me what the charges will be and we'll deal with them in court, as normal."

"Charges? I haven't decided whether to file charges." Regally, Mrs. Hale lowered herself into the chair at the head of the table, folding her hands in front of her. The Sheriff and Mrs. McCall took spots close to her. "Of course, if you would prefer..."

After a second of staring, Allison's mom pulled her own chair out with a sharp yank and sat. "Tell me."

"Maybe we should let the kids speak for themselves." Mrs. McCall, who Allison had always thought of as the nice parent, looked close to spitting nails. _She_ wasn't bothering to hide her teeth. "I'm sure they think they have a reasonable explanation. Don't you, _Scott_?" 

Inch by inch, Scott sunk down into his chair, until only his shoulders were above the table. "That's a trick question, isn't it?" His eyes darted from Allison to Stiles, around the room at the pictures on the wall. Under the table, Allison could see his hand wrapped tight around his inhaler. "There's no right answer, right?"

Stiles slammed his hands down on the table and popped to his feet. "It was my idea! I did it, I talked them into it," he blurted out in a rapid-fire, breathless confession. "I wanted to have an adventure—to do something stupid before we go to college, and I thought checking out a crime scene would be fun! I came up with the idea. If anyone should be punished, it's me."

Oh _no_ , there was no way she was letting Stiles take the fall. She surged to her feet, cutting in before she could second-guess herself. "It wasn't just Stiles. I wanted to come." Biting her lip, she glanced nervously over at the werewolves. Everyone knew they could hear lies, so there wasn't any point in trying. "I— I knew my mom would be furious if I were caught on pack property, especially with Stiles and Scott, and it sounded like fun." Allison took a deep breath, staring at her mother challengingly. "She hates them—she doesn't think I should date them. I liked—I wanted to make her angry if I could. If you're going to blame Stiles, blame me too." Completely true, all of it, and from the way her mother's face had gone pale with rage, she knew it too, werewolves unneeded. 

Mrs. Hale steepled her fingers. "Scott? Do you want to try and take the blame as well? Or maybe you'll claim you were pushed into it? Were here under protest, perhaps?" 

Scott shook his head, clutching his inhaler to his hip. "I could have said no," he answered quietly. His eyes stayed locked on the table. "We didn't know the horse was in there. It was supposed to be abandoned. We just wanted to look for clues, fool around a little. Stupid stuff. That's all."

There'd been almost no change in any of their faces for Allison and Stiles' confessions, but Scott's hangdog was enough to melt steel. Even Laura's brother's expression softened, and Mrs. Hale's face took a distinct _oh you poor sweetheart_ look. Somewhere in the house a phone rang, but they were all too busy buying Scott's sad face to answer it. 

The Sheriff, though, had more experience dealing with Scott than most. He recovered from his bout of sympathy quickly, tapping his fingers on the table for attention. "Derek, you said you'd locked the horse up in the stud barn. You're certain you locked him up tight?"

Derek pulled his eyes away from Scott with a little shake and a newly hardened scowl. "I used gigantor-strength metal plates on the door. Extra thick, hard to cut, guarded by gnomes. Jeff Davis is tough, but he can't bite through steel." He seemed to recall the monster he was referring to and added a quick, "Probably. Not without some work."

"Has anyone _checked_ the stud barn for evidence?" Allison's mom's voice iced the table, proverbially speaking. (Argents as a whole didn't have much to do with magic.) A few heads were shook, and Laura winced guiltily. "I see. So you're accusing my daughter of attempting to steal your horse when, for all we know, this puppy may have simply forgotten to close the stall properly?" 

Gold flashed in Derek's eyes. "I know that I didn't. Maybe with the other horses, but not with this one." 

"Please, don't pretend that people aren't careless with valuable—" 

"It's not because he's expensive, it's because he's a pain in the ass to catch!" Derek bared his teeth in an ugly snarl. Allison shot her chair back, instinctively putting as much space between herself and the angry wolf as possible. Scott and Stiles moved with her, a half a second behind. 

"Derek!" Mrs. Hale snapped. Her eyes, which had been a pretty brown, flared to glowing red. "You and Laura go check on the stud barn. Find out if any of these three have left a scent." 

"But—" 

Tension snapped in the air, a rubber band stretched near to breaking. The werewolves all stared at each other, no one so much as breathing. At some invisible signal, Derek and Laura bolted for the kitchen so quickly that they dropped down to four legs for extra speed. A few minutes later a door in the back of the house slammed. No one moved.

As if summoned by the rattle of the door, a phone started ringing again, too loud in the dead silence of the house. 

Mrs. Hale's expression smoothed out, the faint ridges of an on-coming transformation fading away along with her red eyes. "I apologize for my children. None of us particularly enjoy being woken in the middle of the night. I'm sure you understand. It makes us somewhat... tetchy."

Stiles seemed to completely miss the implication and scooted back up to the table, holding onto the edge like it would keep him anchored. "Look, I'm really sorry we woke you up, but we didn't let the horse loose." Allison winced and tried to kick him under the table, but he was too far and Scott was in the way. "In a few minutes you'll know that we didn't go anywhere near whatever it is," Stiles continued, undaunted. "Can we just go home and say lesson learned? No harm, no foul."

Mrs. Hale didn't so much as curl her lip or arch an eyebrow, but the thick tension was back. Slowly, Stiles slunk back into his seat, shoulders coming up around his ears. " _If_ Derek and Laura find no evidence that you let Jeff Davis out of his stall, we will still have to deal with the matter of your trespassing on a crime scene and private property. And, if I may be blunt Mr. Stilinski, I am not seeing any particular sign that a lesson has been learned."

"Would you like to press charges?" The Sheriff voice was heavy and slow, obviously reluctant. He didn't look at any of them, but Allison could taste his disappointment, and it made her stomach churn. "They're all over eighteen. It'll go on their permanent record." 

The three of them all immediately started to protest, but Allison's mom cut them off by slicing her hand through the air. Probably not coincidentally, it nearly hit the Sheriff in the chest, missing by just an inch. "I don't think that's necessary, is it? We're all adults here. Surely we can come to some arrangement." 

"It seems to me," Mrs. McCall said slowly, looking around at the other adults, "that what our kids have is too much time on their hands, and not enough respect for the hard work a ranch takes."

It didn't ping on Allison right away, but Scott was quick to say, "Mom, _no_." 

The Sheriff snapped his fingers, pointing in Scott's direction. "You, be quiet. Melissa, are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?" 

"If Alpha Hale is agreeable," Mrs. McCall nodded. Her mouth pinched and pulled to the side. "I can't say I'd be happy to lose Scott's last summer before college, but there needs to be consequences."

A slowly building realization started pushing to the front of Allison's mind. She desperately tried not to think about it, not to come to the logical conclusion, but the other options were slim. "Mom?" Her voice went high and wavery with uncertainty. "Mom, tell me you're not going to go along with this." 

The look her mother shot her could have peeled paint. "I can't have my daughter disrespecting pack property, can I?" she snapped, eyebrows arching. "Would you rather have a conviction for trespassing?" 

Allison shook her head, sagging. 

Mrs. Hale watched the byplay with a mildly curious expression, sipping her cocoa thoughtfully. "What terms are you offering?" 

"Our children work on your ranch for the rest of the summer." Mrs. McCall spread her hands over the table top as if she were fanning out cards. "The same hours that your own children would work, whatever those hours are. In exchange, you don't press charges. If they mess up again, deal's off."

The alpha took a few minutes to think about it, drinking her cocoa and staring into the melting whipped cream, not saying anything. 

A dark-haired girl in a battered Strawberry Shortcake pajama set wandered in to hover in the doorway behind her, holding a cordless phone to her shoulder. She didn't look happy to be awake; her hair was all over, and her expression ranged somewhere between premeditated murder and murder accomplished. 

After a moment, Mrs. Hale took another drink of cocoa and said, "What is it, Cora?"

"Foxy Filly Fields is on the phone," Cora answered, and Allison was a little impressed at how her voice managed to carry a hint of imminent violent death in so few words. "Kira says Jeff Davis is trying to dig up their nematon, and can we please come get him before he breaks something." She glanced down at the phone, lifting it a little, and then added, "Or someone."

"How did he....?" Mrs. Hale closed her eyes and groaned, rubbing her forehead. She looked exhausted, and the weight of guilt really hit Allison. They hadn't meant any harm, and the horse wasn't their fault at all, but they'd still made everyone's night a little harder.

"I don't have time to negotiate. You have a deal." Mrs. Hale said, pushing to her feet. "I need you all to come by some time tomorrow so that we can sign the appropriate liability disclaimers and lay down some rules. Work starts at five AM on Monday morning." She flashed her teeth in a smile that managed to be inhuman even without fangs. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to go rescue one of my prize studs from a rival farm. I'm sure you know the way out." 

Reluctantly, Allison pushed to her feet, carefully putting her chair back in against the table. Misery and guilt kept her head low. She didn't think she could look at Scott and Stiles just then. "Mrs. Hale, I really am sorry," she murmured, wrapping her arms around her waist and staring down at her toes. "Thank you for giving us a chance to make it up to you." The boys echoed her, sounding—at least to her human ears—reasonably honest. 

There was a pause, and a soft sigh. Mrs. Hale brushed passed, pressing briefly down on Allison's shoulder. "Believe me, you're going to earn your forgiveness. Working on a ranch isn't all carrots and glittersticks. You might wish your parents had let me press charges."

* * *

Scott didn't know what he'd expected for his first day working on Three Moon. It definitely hadn't been for Derek to greet him by pushing a giant fork into his stomach and saying, "I don't have to teach you how to shovel shit, do I?"

The barn was a giant building lit a soft gold by overhead lights and a few of the sparklier horses. Most of them had their heads buried in their buckets, but a few stretch out over the doors, watching with interest as Derek led Scott down the row. There were all colors of horses—chestnut and bay and gray, some plain pink and others checkered or spotted. One had her mane piled high in shining golden curls, and another had a set of wings that flickered with fire whenever they flexed. 

Every single one was gorgeous. Looking at them, it was hard to believe the thing from the night before was one of the _better_ ones. It just didn't seem right. 

"Stud barn," Derek said, stopping at large box stall at the far end of the first row, where a second fork and a wheelbarrow were waiting, "is a misnomer. We don't stop racing, so almost none of the horses are strictly breeding-only. One of the goals of breeding magical horses is acquiring specific traits. There's a lot of trading back and forth between ranches with that goal in mind. You'll see people come in here all the time to look at the stock. They can look all they like, but if you see someone try to take a horse out make sure there's one of us with them." 

He pushed open the stall door. Inside, an elderly unicorn with a set of wings on its feet looked up from chewing its grain, slit-pupil cat eyes sleepy and content. Derek patted the horse on the shoulder, jerking his chin at the sawdust underfoot. "Show me how you'd clean this up." 

Scott stepped back, looking around the stall. Shining, rainbow clumps were littered in piles, along with metallic-looking damp spots that were probably unicorn piss. The wheelbarrow sat outside in the corridor, mostly empty other than a few clumps of sticky, used sawdust. Considering the task at hand for a moment, he moved the barrow into the stall and closed the door, then started sifting through the sawdust like it was kitty litter. 

It was completely and utterly gross. Unicorn poop might have been brightly colored and sparkling, but it still smelled like shit. The pee was just as bad, reeking of ammonia and sparkling like pyrite. It took less than a minute before he'd accidentally dumped some on his shoes, and then he stepped in another pile trying to shake the first off. 

Derek smirked and leaned against the unicorn's shoulder to watch as Scott fumbled through. It _was_ a lot like cleaning kitty litter, except on a much bigger, more glittery scale. His wrists ached from balancing load after load on the far end of what was essentially a big shovel. Eventually he got the hang of it, though, of the movements that kept the pile balanced and how to tip it into the wheelbarrow without dropping it. Still, it was hard going. 

When he finished, Derek looked around casually, nostrils flaring. He toed the sawdust, as if expecting to find a missed clod, his mouth twisted to the side thoughtfully. "Good enough," he decided, pushing up off the unicorn. "Cora and Laura should have already gotten your friends started. I'm going to go check on them. You're responsible for this entire row. When you're done, hose yourself off and come to the house for breakfast." 

And then he left. 

As if it had been waiting, the unicorn's tail lifted, and a gradient of turquoise to fuchsia turds dropped down to the ground behind it. Groaning, Scott shouldered his fork and went to work. 

Mucking out stalls was exactly the kind of tedious, back-breaking work that Scott had hoped to spend his summer avoiding. It was an endless cycle of shoveling, sifting, wheelbarrowing and then going back for more. Every now and then, one of the Hales would walk by and look surprised to see him still at work. He didn't know what they'd expected. Maybe for him to have given up by now. 

Scott wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. 

Once he'd gotten the pattern down, time flew. He emptied the wheel barrow after every stall, and hopefully got the piles right. If he remembered various field trips right, precious metals were sifted out of used sawdust by money-minded ranchers, and he did _not_ want to be the person who had to sort piss piles because he'd gotten unicorn mixed up with pegasus.

As he worked, Scott was accompanied by the constant wound of Stiles complaining to the horses about the mess they were making. It included thumps, thuds and one loud cry of, "It _flies_?" 

"Tamp it down!" Allison called, far enough away that her voice echoed a little. "It sticks!"

"This is the grossest thing _ever_ ," Stiles snarled, accompanied by a thwack that Scott assumed was his attempt to make floaters stay down. "I hope you two know how much I love you!"

"We love you too, man!" Grinning to himself, Scott ducked under the bronze-plated neck of a horse that was at least part robot and kept working. _Its_ droppings were chunks of metal ingots and some kind of oil, which at least didn't smell too bad. He was pretty sure he had one of the ingots in his shoe, though. It scratched at his ankle with every step, but he was too afraid to look and be sure that was what it was. 

Before Scott knew it, he'd worked his way to the last stall on the row. Unlike every other stall in the barn, it was closed top door and bottom, reinforced by thick metal bars and surrounded by a double ring of ceramic garden gnomes, knee-high and in heavy armor. Their spears crossed as soon as he approached, little rosy-cheeked faces turning toward him with a line of scowls. In the locked stall, a horse snorted. 

"Maybe we should ask for help?" Allison poked her head around the corner, cradling her fork in her elbow. Her worn blue overshirt was liberally stained with the same literal shit as his, and her hair was falling out of its braid where one of the horses had gnawed on it. "This is kind of... excessive."

"But Derek said I was supposed to do this whole aisle," Scott protested. "I don't want to mess up on our first day!"

"You also don't want to have to break into the stall, right?" Stiles' voice came from overhead. Tipping his head back, Scott could just make out the spiky top of Stiles' head peeking over a wall three stalls down—he must have climbed it somehow. Or he was standing on a steady pile of pegasus poop. "Though I guess you could be brutally gutted, instead. Those are some mean looking gnomes, man." 

Allison eyed the gnomes warily, tapping her fingers against the wall. Scott didn't blame her—garden gnomes could be vicious when provoked. "Come on. Let's go ask Laura. She's nicer than Derek." She set her fork aside and hooked an arm through Scott's, tugging him down the aisle. He dug in his heels, but it just ended up with him stumbling forward anyway.

Outside the sun was well on its way to rising, turning the sky a riot of reds and purples. Horses were already working on the paths around the ranch, and foals were splashing over in the water lanes. They cut across the main paths and headed straight for the back, toward an oval track packed with horses being ridding at a slow trot side-by-side. Dew soaked through his sneakers almost immediately, chilling his toes and making his socks squish. 

They found Laura sitting on a fence, watching the pack of horses as they alternately jostled forward and then settled back. Her eyes stayed locked on the track, not even flicking their way as they stepped up behind her. "Give them a little more rein!" she called, not even loud enough to be considered a shout. Somehow the riders heard anyway, and the horses broke from their trotting into canters. "Hold her in, Cora, she's trying to edge out Sparky! Keep her back! You two finished with the mucking?" 

Scott startled back a half-step before remembering that she was a werewolf, and had probably heard them coming as soon as they'd stepped out of the barn. "Um, almost?" Scott hedged, fidgeting. Allison gave him a supportive smile, squeezing where she still had her hand locked around his arm. "There's one stall that's kind of... locked down? And I don't know if you want me to clean it or what." 

Laura pushed her dark hair out of her eyes and finally twisted around to look at them. "That's Jeff Davis' current stall." A hint of fang poked at her bottom lip, just barely visible but enough to make Scott sweat. "The code to disarm the gnomes is Pixie Dust. I'll stop by once we're finished here to double-check on things. Don't fuck up." She turned back to the track, yelling, "Erica, hold to your lane! He's got to learn to run in a straight line! Liam, heels down!" 

Nodding at Laura's turned back, Scott and Allison scuttled back, getting ten feet away before daring to turn their backs and run. 

"Are werewolves always that scary?" he gasped once they were out of sight around the barn and mostly safe; Laura almost definitely wouldn't bother chasing them down. His lungs felt tight, but not achy in the Impending Asthma Attack sort of way. More like Too Terrified to Breathe, which Scott could live with. For a few minutes, anyway. "I thought you said she was nicer than Derek!" 

"Nicer than Derek is a low bar to step over." Allison slowed to match his pace, rubbing between his shoulder blades. "Come on, let's just get it done." 

Back in the stud barn, they found the ring of gnomes unchanged and Stiles sprawled in the middle of the aisle, bleeding. 

"Stiles!" Scott pulled out from Allison's grip to rush over. "What happened? Are you hurt? Did you—"  
2  
"I'm fine, I'm fine—it's just a flesh wound. A scratch!" Stiles waved off their helping hands and pushed himself up on his elbows, then groaned and flopped back down. Teeth marks ran up and down his arms, and his t-shirt was shredded over his stomach, blood staining the dark blue cotton black. 

Allison dropped to her knees, carefully pulling Stiles' shirt up. For once, he hadn't been lying. It was a scratch, albeit a long one running from ribs to hip, and bleeding more than Scott would have expected for such a shallow thing. She wrinkled her nose down at it, carefully keeping her dirty fingers away from the wound. "What did you do?" 

"Tried to go over the stall door. Do you know gnomes can climb? Because I didn't." 

This time when Stiles tried to sit up, Scott slipped behind him, providing support until he was fully upright. "You should go to the house. The Hales probably have some bandages or something." 

Stiles whined, but let them drag him out of the way and set him up on a stool where the gnomes wouldn't get him. Allison disarmed the gnomes and moved them out of the way while Scott loosened the bars that were blocking the door closed. Anti-fire charms were carved into them, tingling his fingertips as he unscrewed them from their settings. There was no sign of however the horse must have gotten before, but Scott assumed it must have been a different stall. It wasn't like a horse could just phase through the door or something. 

Working together, he and Allison pulled until the heavy stall door creaked open until they could look inside. It turned out that Jeff Davis was even uglier in daylight. His mane and tail were a mess of bluish knots and curls sticking out in all directions with a beard to match, clashing with his mostly orange coat, and his horn was curved and knotted almost as badly. His face was mostly the skull-type, but cracked and twisted, weathered almost. Nothing like the cheerful Halloween mask of other skeleton horses.

Worst of all were the teeth. 

"Does... that horse have fangs?" Scott asked faintly. He couldn't think of anything else to call giant, pointy teeth where canines would be on anything other than an herbivore. They were big, sharp, and bared in an actual growl. Scott hadn't known horses could even make that noise. 

Jeff Davis snorted, lowering his head to aim his horn square at Scott's chest. He sprang forward. 

Shouting, Allison and Scott slammed the stall door as Jeff Davis rammed into it, catching his horn in in the gap. The force of the blow skidded them across the concrete floor.A gnarled horn flailed back and forth in the small space it had, almost slicing Scott's hand off. It gleamed with a razor's edge, sparking where it scraped metal. 

Hooves clattered against the reinforced metal like thunder. Scott's feet slipped, rubber squeaking on cement. He threw his weight against the door, straining to keep it from opening further under the weight of the assault. The sheer weight of the horse was winning, though. A cloven hoof stuck through, wedging the door wider. 

Suddenly Stiles was there, shoving in front of Scott and armed with one of the gnome's spears. "Back! Get back!' He jammed it in the gap, and the door wobbled and slammed shut as the weight pressing against it suddenly vanished. Allison slammed the bar back into place with loud thump, just as another enraged growl cut through the barn air.

Scott heaved a massive sigh and collapsed down against the door. It thudded against his back, but apparently even an angry Jeff Davis couldn't get through a foot of solid metal. Allison dropped beside him, and then Stiles on his other side, bleeding from a new cut on his forehead.

"That went well," Stiles commented. "Can we just fight the gnomes instead?" 

"You guys don't have to help," Scott offered. It felt a lot like offering to walk the gallows rather than clean a stall, but that was alright. He'd walk the gallows for Allison and Stiles. It'd probably be less painful than fighting Jeff Davis anyway. Definitely less dangerous. "It's my row. I'll clean it." 

Allison dug her elbow into his side, grinding it in until he yelped. "We're in this together," she said sternly. "No self-sacrifice."

"Besides, if all three of us can't do it together, then _you're_ definitely not going to be able to do it alone," Stiles added. He draped sideways over Scott's shoulder like Scott was about to do so something stupid and his plan was to weigh him down. Which of course he wasn't. Doing stupid things was Stiles' job. Scott only got involved when Stiles dragged him into it, and then Allison fished them out before they died.

But Stiles did have a point. Just in case, Scott pulled out his phone to check the weather and, no, Hell was its usual six hundred and sixty-six degrees. That was a little disappointing. His mom had promised to take him if it ever cooled down. 

"There's got to be a way," Scott said to himself, flipping through his weather app. "How do you think the Hales do it?"

"I think they probably wrestle the horse to the ground and hold him pinned with their _massive werewolf muscles_." By the way Stiles' head shifted, he was probably looking up at Scott pitifully. "And their massive werewolf teeth and their massive werewolf abs." His tone slipped from urgent to just a lot lecherous. "And their massive werewolf thighs and their..." 

Slowly, Allison and Scott leaned forward to give Stiles simultaneous Looks. 

"Derek worked in the dunking booth at the BHPD fair once," Stiles finished, completely unrepentant and surprisingly dreamy for someone who was still bleeding. "Don't judge until you've seen him soaking wet in tights and a tunic, okay?" 

They were silent for a moment. Scott swallowed. He could picture it. Really easily, actually. Derek had one of those figures that was all muscle and broad shoulders and things for wet cloth to cling to. And the dunking booth traditionally didn't bother with thick clothing. 

Allison shook herself and pushed to her feet, brushing dirt off her ass. "Okay, but nice as that is, it's not helping us get the stall done. Here's what we're going to do. You two will cover me with spears while I get a halter on the horse. Then one of you will get the cleaning done while the other mans a spear. If he attacks, we run. Deal?" 

Scott glanced over at the spears in the gnomes' tiny ceramic fists. They were definitely sharp, gleaming with barbs, and would hopefully work. It depended on whether or not Jeff Davis was smart enough to realize that sharp things hurt. That wasn't a bet Scott really wanted to take. 

But they didn't exactly have much choice, unless they wanted to go tell Laura that they'd failed. "I'll clean the poop, but I want you two to stay close to the door, so he doesn't corner you." 

"This is going to go so badly," Stiles muttered, but he handed his spear over to Allison and reached over to pry an extra one free from one of the garden gnomes. It scowled and fought to hold on, but with the deactivation code it couldn't do more than tighten its grip and lash its bushy gray mustache angrily. They went back and forth until Stiles managed one hard yank and the spear popped loose of the gnome's hold. 

Stiles smacked himself in the face and toppled backwards into Scott's lap. "That wasn't so bad."

"If you say so. Come on, let's do this." Wrapping an arm around Stiles' shoulders, Scott hefted him to his feet with Allison's help, making sure he didn't accidentally stab himself. 

They rooted around in the barn until they found the metal and onyx halters that Scott sort of suspected were for horses that were actually part dragon. Allison dug out a box of treats called _Applejack Talent Enhancers™, now fortified with Vitamin Sparkle_. The box jingled alarmingly when shaken, but the contents didn't seem to be anything other than horse cookies. Maybe they were a bit crumblier than usual, but when Stiles nibbled on one it just made his hair a little more shiny, so it couldn't have been too bad. 

And then, it was action time. 

Allison stood back with the halter and the treats while Scott and Stiles worked the door, unlocking it and slowly swinging it open. They covered her with the spears as she edged in, halter hidden carefully behind her back and one hand extended. 

Jeff Davis waited from the far corner of the stall, ears pinned and teeth bared. When Allison jingled the box his head went up and his ears swiveled forward, the magic of treats doing their work. Moldy-looking feathers drifted down to the sawdust as he fluttered his wings excitedly. Jeff Davis' neck stretched out, lipping at Allison's palm. He could have been mistaken for a normal horse until Allison hissed and flinched, blood puddling in her palm where his fangs had nicked it. The horse didn't even seem to care, lapping up the blood even more eagerly than he had the treat. 

"Ew," Stiles groaned, taking a step closer to the stall door and hauling so it was just wide enough for them to escape if they had to. "Keep that thing away from me. If I'm going to die, it's not going to be because a unicorn sucked my blood out, okay? If I want that I'll visit a vampire." 

"Shut up shut up _shut up_ ," Allison growled, looking faintly green while the horse's giant tongue slimed over her palm. "If I puke you're dealing with him alone." Carefully, she looped the rope around his neck. It tangled in his knotty green-blue mane almost immediately, but did its job to keep him from wandering off while she slipped the halter on his head. The clasps clicked into place, magical locks flaring blue and sealing tight. "Okay Scott, I've got him."

Moving slowly, just in case, Scott set his spear aside and reached for the pitchfork. Stiles stepped sideways to block the door against an escape attempt, but Jeff Davis didn't look like he was interested in killing right then. He was still trying to clean the blood from Allison's palm.

It was _disgusting_. Scott tried not to look as he got to work, scooping poop around the large Macy's bag sitting randomly in the corner, stuffed with a few dresses and a lampshade. He didn't know why it was there, other than that Macy's carried a variety of fashionable household goods and clothing at unbeatable prices, but he wasn't going to question it. The day had been weird enough as it was without bringing Marketing down on their heads. 

Surprisingly, there weren't that many turds or puddles littering the sawdust. The few he found were mostly red and blue, dropped in convenient little batches instead of scattered around or trampled. He started picking at them, as fast as he could tossing them into the wheelbarrow with a goal of getting them out of there as quickly as possible. 

Which was probably why it took Stiles to say, "Uh, did that horse poop the words _die die die_?" 

Scott looked up from his work to blink at Stiles, except Stiles was too busy staring at the floor in horror. Swiveling his head, Scott followed Stiles' line of sight and, yes, under the cleared places there was definitely something etched there. It looked like glittery acid had eaten through to the concrete, picking out words like a connect the dots game, forming _died ie ddi e_. 

Feeling like the main character in some sort of weird supermarket horror novel, Scott slowly pushed aside the remaining sawdust to reveal one last _DI_. 

Allison scrunched her nose "Maybe we should—"

"Hey!" Derek's voice rattled off the rafters, making Scott fumble his pitchfork in shock. He yanked the door wide open, eyes glowing gold as unicorn piss. "What do you three think you're doing?" 

Jeff Davis' head came up, and his ears went back. His cloven hoof pawed the sawdust nervously, and he licked his lips. 

"We were just cleaning his stall," Allison explained. She tightened her hold on the rope holding the horse, wrapping it around her forearm so he couldn't break free. 

"He was the last one on the row," Scott added, since it was the truth. "And it's fine, we've got him under—"

With a scream, Jeff Davis reared, lashing out with his front hooves. One of them slammed into Allison's chest, sending her flying back into Stiles. He barely got his spear out of the way in time. They went down, smacking into the wall before collapsing into a still heap. 

Scott dropped his pitchfork and grabbed for the rope, but as soon as he touched it the halter fell apart like it was made of tissue paper. The horse shook the remains of of the halter loose and leaped. Derek tried to shove the door closed, werewolf muscles bulging. Jeff Davis got to him first. Bone cracked as his horn pierced straight through Derek's chest. 

"No!" Scott felt like he was trapped in slow motion, forced to watch as Derek slowly toppled backward. He slipped off the horn, sagging to the floor. Blood spilled out of the hole in his chest, soaking the sawdust.

Jeff Davis took one look at his work and then vanished out the stall door.

Time let go. Scott rushed to Derek's side, pressing his hands to the wound to try and stop the bleeding. There wasn't a heartbeat, and he couldn't feel any breathing. Lessons from his mom ran through his head, things about the Heimlich and CPR and how to set a dislocated shoulder in an emergency. Nothing about what to do for someone who'd been run through by a unicorn. "Laura! Cora! Help! Someone, help! Call an ambulance!" 

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A second later, a black man in riding gear skidded around the corner and almost tripped over Derek's body. He flailed to catch himself on the doorway, looked down at all the blood, then around the stall and asked, "Jeff Davis?" 

Scott gaped. "I don't— call for help, Derek's hurt!" 

"Yeah, I can see that." The man looked around, completely unperturbed by the bodies lying at his feet. "I'm Boyd. Nice to meet you. Where's the horse?"

Blood seeped through Scott's fingers, warm and sticky and surreal. "I don't know, he ran off! Why aren't you calling for help? Derek's dying!" 

"He'll be fine." To Scott's utter shock, Boyd nudged Derek's shoulder with the toe of his riding boot. "Hey, stop being a baby and wake up. You're scaring the new guys." Derek's head rocked limply, blood dribbling from his mouth. Boyd kicked him again. "Derek! Come on, get up!"

A wet, rasping cough hacked through Derek's lungs. He rolled out of Scott's arms, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His claws flexed, scraping all the way down to and through the cement. "I'm going to turn that horse into saddle leather." 

"You always say that." Bending over, Boyd hooked an arm around Derek's chest and hauled him upright, patting his back. "Cough it up, come on." 

The hole in Derek's chest flexed, oozing gobs of more blood. It didn't seem to cause him any problems as he looked around. "Everyone else alright?" 

Feeling like he'd been one of the ones hit on the head, Scott looked around. "Stiles and Allison are still unconscious and there's a horse that poops death threats on the loose? So no. Not really alright." 

"Don't worry," Boyd said with a gentle smile. "You get used to it."

* * *

Stiles woke up in a warm bed piled high with blankets and a medicinal teddy bear. 

That in itself wasn't a surprise. He'd woken up with the teddy bear before, usually after doing something stupid with Scott and Allison. There'd been the Attempting To Fly incident of 2011, when he hadn't checked the expiration on the pixie dust. Then the rabid fox problem a couple months after that. And he'd practically lived with it after his mom had died. 

This was the first time he'd woken up with the teddy bear wrapped around his face though. The glowing red cross on its stomach pressed right against his eye, blinding him through his eyelid. He tried to pry at it, but it clung tight, radiating tingling numbness and a generic sense of contentment. Wedging his fingers under its paws just resulted in trapping his hands and absolutely no escape. 

"Um? Anyone there?" he asked the room in general, hoping he hadn't been left alone. That would suck. "A little help?" 

Wood creaked, and the bundle of green fur was carefully dislodged and lifted off. Stiles found himself face-to-eyebrows with the not unpleasant sight of Derek Hale. 

At least, it wasn't unpleasant until Stiles saw that he had a giant, bloody hole in his shirt. He stared at it in horrified fascination. Underneath was a smooth, weirdly clean circle of completely hairless skin surrounded by chunks of blood matted in Derek's chest hair. More blood was dried around the collar, and down the front, across Derek's pants. He looked like he was going to a Halloween party in the sort of costume that could be made with a pair of scissors and a dollar of fake blood. "Are you okay?" 

Derek followed Stiles' eyes down to the mess, then shrugged and pulled Stiles upright. His hands were, at least, freshly scrubbed. "It happens. How are you feeling?"

The water was cool and slightly minty on Stiles' tongue, and the pills probably Tylenol. At least, he hoped they were, because blood thinners after a head injury was bound to be a bad idea. Without the bear's charms Stiles could feel a faint throbbing in his forehead. Not bad, but enough to make the painkillers welcome. When he rubbed it, someone had stuck on a bandage on his forehead. As far as he could tell, there was no cut, or even a bruise. Just a bandage. "Missing the bear. What happened?"

Like he didn't even realize they were already practically cuddled up (if one didn't count the ten or so brightly colored quilts and knitted blankets, which Stiles didn't), Derek swung his legs up and settled in by Stiles' side. He glared at Stiles suspiciously as he burrowed into the blankets and pulled out one of his hands, gently wrapping it up in his own. "You tried to clean Jeff Davis' stall." 

Not staring. Stiles was _not staring_ , even though Derek was holding his _freaking hand_. He was sweltering under a foot of blankets in summer while an air conditioner rattled the vents, someone had stuck a completely unnecessary bandage on him, and there was platonic werewolf handholding. The whole thing was quickly crossing from weird into surreal. The next step was probably Made for TV Movie.

There reached a point where even Stiles had to give up and just go with it. He flopped back into the pillows, letting Derek do whatever he wanted. Allison and Scott would understand, wherever they were. For all he knew, they had their own werewolves to hold their hands. _Whatever_. "Yeah, I got that part. The head trauma's not that bad. What happened after though? I was kind of unconscious."

Derek shrugged, rubbing Stiles' knuckles with his thumb in a way that sent completely un-platonic shivers through him. "I'm not sure. He stabbed me in the heart and then ran. We think he's out by Foxy Filly again."

It took Stiles a second to process the _he stabbed me in the heart_ part well enough to be sure that, yes, that was actually what his ears had heard and, no, it wasn't an auditory illusion brought on by the way Derek's hand was soft and warm and kind of nice to hold. "And you're... okay?"

"It happens." Derek pulled their hands up. Faint black lines ran down Derek's veins, twisting up into his forearm and vanishing under his shirt sleeve. "Are you sure you need this? You're not hurting that much." 

They were very nice veins, layered over very nice muscles, and all Stiles could think was, _Oh, so that's what that was_. 

At least it explained the handholding. "I'm good, thanks. In fact..." He pulled his hand free and started wiggling, kicking down the blankets until blessedly cool air reached his skin. 

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Derek frowned. That seemed to be one of his major expressions; it was probably just Stiles' imagination that painted a hint of worry in it. "You were hurt."

"It was a knock to the head, not a fever." One last kick and Stiles was free to sprawl in the glorious flow of air conditioning. By the set of Derek's jaw, he was still unconvinced. There was a lot of jaw to be unconvinced, too, so Stiles was absolutely certain that's what it was saying. "Teddy bear fixed me right up. I'm fine. Just— where's Scott and Allison?"

There was a short staring match before Derek finally mumbled, "Allison already woke up, and I think Scott is downstairs." He rolled off the bed, landing with the soft sound of bare feet on carpet. "You missed lunch. Come on."

Always willing to follow the promise of food, Stiles trailed Derek out the door and into the hallway. It was a nice enough place, but obviously home to a family of werewolves. All the bedroom doors had levers instead of knobs, which no doubt came in handy for a family that spent any amount of time on paws. It was also more subtle than doggy doors. 

Derek led him down three flights of stairs into the den, which featured a television, a couch, and a giant pit of pillows covered in a faint patina of fur, and then through the dining room where the fate of Stiles' summer had been decided. Their final destination ended up not there, however, but the screened back porch where a veritable buffet had been laid out. Scott and Allison sat at a small breakfast table, clutching cups of coffee and surrounded by food. Mrs. Hale sat across from thoughtfully, frowning thoughtfully as she toyed with a plate of eggs and a tablet. 

When Stiles and Derek entered, she barely glanced up, but Scott twisted around to look, mouth full of some sort of burrito. Allison smiled up from her bowl of fruit. Like Stiles, she had a bandage on her forehead that didn't look like it was connected to any sort of actual wound. It was just a bandage, obviously placed by someone who had no idea how humans worked other than from TV.

Stiles grabbed the closest chair to Scott and scooted it closer before taking a seat. "Yo, babes, what's it like on the uninjured side of life?" 

Hurriedly Scott finished chewing. "Are you okay? Mrs. Hale said you hit your head pretty hard. The teddy bear's head turned purple, dude." 

"He's fine." Because he was a handholding werecreep, Derek propped himself up in a corner rather than sat down. Or possibly because his jeans were too tight to sit in. Either was plausible. "It was back to green by the time he woke up."

Scott didn't seem to buy it. He frowned at Stiles, burrito slowly starting to fall apart in his hands. "Are you sure? A little pinker and you'd have needed a doctor."

"What Derek said. I'm fine." He wasn't actually hungry, but Stiles poured a cup of coffee and grabbed one of the doughnuts. It looked—and proved to be—cream filled, which would hopefully keep him going for a little while. If they got lucky, being almost killed on day one might get them a pity release from the deal. "Thank you for food, Mrs. Hale. And the teddy bear. Practically no headache left."

Mrs. Hale dipped her head in acknowledgment. "Derek did most of the work." Her eyes darted over to her son, who was slowly turning redder than a teddy bear in an intensive care unit. "Once I established that you two weren't in need of hospitalization, he insisted on helping."

"Oh." Stiles glanced over at Scott and Allison. They looked just as confused as he was. Derek didn't seem like the kind of person to insist on helping anyone. Maybe the kind of person who had to be blackmailed into it, but this didn't feel like _that_ sort of Parental Shame Train. "Well, thanks man. I owe you." 

"I just didn't want you to waste the day in bed recovering." Derek's shoulders hunched up around his ears. He stared determinedly at his feet. "That's all. We have to go to Foxy Filly, and I'm taking you three with me."

Mrs. Hale's eyebrows went up. "Perhaps you should change your shirt first. Noshiko won't thank you if you get blood on the nematon."

The reply came by way of an awkward mumble. Derek hunched down even more as he started slinking back the way they'd come, tugging the ragged remains of his t-shirt off as he went. Luckily, his back was entirely turned before Stiles had to lean to continue to ogle. Scott and Allison leaned with him, holding at a sharp angle until Derek turned out of sight. They sighed collectively and straightened up in time to see Mrs. Hale smirking at them over the top of her tablet.

"He's single," she offered cheerfully, swiping a finger across the screen. "In case you were wondering."

The level of mother-induced awkwardness in the room soared. To keep himself from sticking his foot in it, Stiles stuck his doughnut in it instead. It was, as expected, full of delicious creamy goodness, and also thick enough to keep him from talking around it. Additionally, it functioned as a distraction from Mrs. Hale's smug face, or from having to look Scott and Allison in the eye. Not enough to keep him from remembering that werewolves had noses to rival a bloodhound's though. 

By silent agreement, they ate fast, tearing through fried, fruity and glazed breakfasts at record speed. When Derek stomped back into the kitchen in a clean, unperforated henley, Stiles was already finishing his second cup of coffee and had mostly stopped blushing. 

He scowled like they'd broken some incredibly specific rule. "If you're not ready to go, you're staying behind to help clean the water run. No one's done it in a while, and it's overdue."

"Oh no, we're ready," Allison chirped, using the smile that Stiles knew from experience usually made people fall all over her. None of them had ever had her pull a crossbow on them after one tiny misunderstanding with Scott's asthma spray. If they had, they'd have been singing a different tune. 

Derek's eyebrows pulled up out of their nosedive. He nodded once, kissed his mother on the cheek—Stiles had to physically bite his tongue to keep from making a joke about Mama's Boys—and stalked out the door. They trailed after, clustered tight together like that would be any protection. 

In the yard Cora was helping a pale blond boy with a butterfly-winged pegasus and Laura's voice echoed between the trees, still barking instructions like a drill sergeant. Derek led them past the fluttering horse and to a battered yellow pickup painted with a massive white 1 on the side. The horse trailer hitched behind it was about a thousand times nicer, with a clean red paint job and sparkling chrome. 

Ancient metal groaned as Derek climbed in the driver's side. The engine clicked, and then rolled over with a sound like dying robots. "Get in."

Scott glanced around, expression quiet and solemn and clearly thinking the same thing Stiles was—a pickup bench seat just wasn't going to cut it. "I don't think there's enough—"

" _In_."

Reluctantly, they got in. Stiles ended up squished against the door, while Scott got to be the lucky man in the center. They tried to wedge Allison in between them, but it practically pushed Scott into Derek's lap, and there was no way to drive like that. So she ended up perched on Stiles' left thigh and Scott's right, holding on to the oh-shit bar for balance. Stiles prayed his father wasn't on patrol. Not being the driver wouldn't save him. 

They turned off the main highway early on and into a back route that was ninety percent dirt, ten percent lies. The pickup ran like a racehorse with hobbled legs and a bad wing. It stuttered, groaned and refused to move faster than thirty miles an hour even going downhill. Allison bounced between laps every time the truck hit a pothole, until eventually Stiles and Scott wrapped their arms around her waist to keep her anchored down. 

Mid-way through the trip, Derek cleared his throat and looked away, chin tilted up and eyes fixed on the clouds rather than the road. "Laura," he started slowly, biting off the name like it was bits of adorable baby bunnies, "said that that she gave you permission to clean the stall. I... interrupted." 

Allison's back went stiff. "Yeah," she said slowly, barely audible over the rumble of the ancient motor. "You did."

Derek pressed his lips together in an unhappy scowl and nodded, looking back at the road. Stiles waited for the apology that he instinctively felt should follow a statement like that. And waited.

He was still waiting when they turned at a hand-painted sign reading _Foxy Filly Fields: Private Drive_. It looped around a series of fenced pastures dotted seemingly exclusively by fox-type horses, with their big bushy tails and tiny canine noses. They looked up as the truck groaned and shook its way past. 

The road ended a small house surrounded by massive trees that were loaded with a spray of colorful blossoms. Expensive rainbows reflected everywhere there was water and a few places there weren't. There was a gazebo in the back with a collection of cheerful looking magical constructs shaped like children tending the flowers, and the main barn was a castle plucked out of a fantasy novel. Overall, it was less of a classic look than Three Moon, but Stiles thought he liked it. 

Mrs. Yukimura came out of the barn as they piled out of the truck, watching them with an amused expression. A tiny red and white foal trailed behind her on spindly legs, wearing a halter that looked like it was made out of spider silk and dreams. Given that the Yukimuras were kitsune, that wasn't impossible. 

"It's good to see you again, Derek," Mrs. Yukimura said softly, patting the foal on the back. With a little shove she shooed him into a paddock, locking the latch with a quick snap of her fingers. "And with help, this time. Are these the sneak thieves you were telling me about last week?"

Derek pulled himself out of the driver's seat and leaned over the bed of the pickup to pull out a box of treats and a halter. "That's them. You've got Jeff Davis?"

"He's attacking the nemeton. Again." Waving a graceful _follow_ , Mrs. Yukimura led the way around the back of the castle-barn, down a rock-bordered path to a crater in the landscape holding what had to be the largest tree Stiles had ever seen. It towered overhead, leaves in every shade of green blocking out the sky. Tiny trees surrounded it, bent and twisted into a living fence to keep people from falling over the edge. Steps made out of roots led down into the mini-valley where Jeff Davis was busily throwing a fit around the trunk of the tree. The source of his annoyance was obvious: Kira Yukimura stood with her back to the tree, holding a katana ready to keep him from doing too much damage. When he tried to get at the trunk she stepped in his way, swatting him back with the flat of the blade. 

"I don't know how he keeps getting out," Derek muttered, leaning on the fence with crossed arms and his usual perpetual grumpy face. "We've been updating our spells. I thought it was good enough this time. And he keeps coming _here_ , of all places. The other horses just go to the feed barn when they get out." 

"That tree used to hold the power of a dark spirit, a _nogitsune_. It fed off of chaos, terror, strife." Mrs. Yukimura leaned in next to Derek, shoulder to shoulder. "Perhaps he's attracted to the remnants of its power."

They watched while Jeff Davis tried to chew a hole in a root next. His hooves worked frantically at the dirt, and he'd already dug a sizable hole, but it was well away from the trunk. Every now and then he charged at Kira, but she fended him off easily every time.

"You said it used to. What happened to it?" Scott asked curiously.

Mrs.Yukimura shrugged. "Community service. I believe it volunteers at a local elementary now. Drama classes."

Well, if ever there was a place to find chaos, terror and strife, that was it. "Great. Let's get this over with so we can get back to raking horse shit." Pushing himself up off the fence, Stiles yanked the halter out of Derek's surprisingly loose grip and started down toward the tree. 

Halfway down, he was ambushed. 

"What's _wrong_ with you?" Allison demanded in a hiss, hopping a few steps to get in front and block his way. "You're being rude!" 

" _I'm_ being rude?" Stiles started to ask, but Scott cut over the top of him with, "You need to apologize to Derek," and all Stiles could manage was to gape wordlessly. He grasped at spots in the air, as if he could peel words out of them with enough effort. 

"I—" he managed after a second of useless sputtering, "need to apologize. To _Derek_. The guy who _nearly got us killed_ , and then couldn't even look at us and say he was sorry for it? And _I'm_ the one that needs to apologize? Really?"

Allison grabbed his arm and yanked his arm, dragging him down to her level. "He's a _werewolf_ , Stiles," she said in a patient, teeth-gritted, growl of a whisper. "Didn't you listen to anything in Sentient Creature Psyche? He admitted he was wrong and _showed us his throat_."

"That's like, on your knees begging forgiveness to werewolves." Scott's face twisted into a pained, apologetic grimace, and Stiles' stomach dropped somewhere near bedrock. "I mean, yeah it was shitty, but it was a mistake and he's sorry. Give the guy a break."

They stared at him, two sets of big, sad brown eyes, and Stiles was so fucked. He was fucked, and he'd fucked up. There was legitimately no way the day could get worse unless they tried to convince him to rob a bank or something. Which, with those eyes, they absolutely could, and the worst part was that his dad wouldn't even be surprised. "Fine, fine, I'll talk to him," Stiles mumbled, running his hand through his hair. "Let's just get the stupid horse." 

Scott kissed his cheek. That made it a little better. 

Down by the tree, Kira was still holding her own. She beamed at them, ducking neatly beneath Jeff Davis' flailing hooves. "Hey guys!" Metal clanged as she parried his horn and pushed him back toward his hole. "Come to pick him— _back, back, damn it!_ —up?"

The ground thumped, and Derek just _appeared_ , dropping over the fence and straight down into the valley. "Allison, Scott, cover the stairs."

Mrs. Yukimura followed, with an added flip and a fancy three point landing. Walking was for humans, apparently. "Kira," she added, "keep him in his hole. Mr. Stilinski, I believe you have the halter?" 

And lo, Allison and Scott nodded in agreement, because standing between a killer horse and his only way out was a great idea. They probably didn't see anything wrong with it. They probably thought it was _fun_.

The only solution was obviously to get the horse under control before he could hurt them. "Lucky me," Stiles muttered, uncoiling the rope. He'd seen Allison put one on. It couldn't be that hard. "But everyone please remember that I'm not a werewolf." 

They circled Jeff Davis, who didn't seem to realize that anything was going on. He'd abandoned his attacks for the moment to focus on digging his hole deeper. It had gotten big enough that Stiles wondered if they were even going to be able to get him out of it without a lift of some sort. The part where he was working came up past his shoulder, which should have been impossible for him to have dug out in such a short amount of time. 

Everything seemed like it would go fine until Kira's sword edged into his line of vision, and Jeff Davis' head popped up like a jack in the box. He bared his fangs and backed away from the blade, scrambling up and out of the hole, butt-first. Stiles side-stepped behind Derek and Mrs. Yukimura, angling himself in for the capture as soon as the horse's head came into reach. 

Jeff Davis did him one better. As soon as his feet were on solid ground he reared, hooves lashing out. This time Stiles was ready and ducked, getting just a scrape when the cloven hoof barely missed his shoulder. Kira dove in with a yell, sword flashing. Instead of backing up more, Jeff Davis danced to the side, ramming into her with his shoulder and sending her staggering backward. Kira teetered over the edge of the hole. Jeff Davis' butt swung around, crashing into her again. She fell, vanishing into the pit with a scream. 

Mrs. Yukimura darted past Stiles, yanking the halter from his hands and throwing the rope around Jeff Davis' neck. The horse dodged with a backward flail, somehow ducking under her arm in spite of all laws of physics and twisting around to shove her out of the way. He danced in a circle, rearing and tossing his ratty blue mane, fangs bared in challenge. 

"Hey! Over here!" A rock flew, smacking into the dirt at Jeff Davis' feet. Derek waved his arms back and forth. He threw another rock, missing entirely. It didn't matter—he had the horse's attention. Jeff Davis' head turned. His head lowered, horn pointed level at Derek's chest. "Stiles, now!"

Scrambling to his feet, Stiles tried to edge in from the side while Derek was still a distraction but before he was a shish-kebab. 

Before he could even get in arm's length, the horse's butt swung around. Hooves flashed, slamming into Stiles' chest. He sailed backward, hitting the ground and rolling to keep from getting trampled. His lungs seized up, refusing to inflate no matter how hard he tried to breathe. He was forced to watch helplessly as Scott and Allison joined the fray and were summarily kicked, bitten and tossed aside like ragdolls. 

Finally Jeff Davis had enough. He picked his target and charged. The horn made a slick, gross sound slamming into Derek's stomach, and then a snap as he was thrown into the air. Screaming his freedom, Jeff Davis scrambled up the stairs and galloped away.

"What happened?" Kira asked, voice echoy and strangely distant. "Is he gone?" 

Groaning, Stiles rolled over onto his stomach, sucking in the tiny gulps of air he was able to manage. Everything in and connected to his chest ached. Since he was closest, he kept rolling until he could look down into the hole. He blinked. "What the..."

Kira looked up at him from the bottom of a pit that definitely hadn't been there before. At a guess, it was at least twenty feet deep, but was hard to tell for certain since it was filled with glitter. Enough of it that she was clinging to the side to keep her head above the glitterline. 

"Little help?" she asked, smiling hopefully. "I would kind of like to not die today, if it's all the same to you." 

The halter and rope were long enough to stretch, just barely. Between Allison, Scott and Stiles they were able to get Kira high enough out of the glitter to rappel the rest of the way. Mrs. Yukimura took care of the last bit, grabbing her daughter by the shoulders and yanking her the last few feet into a desperate hug.

Then they all collapsed in a pile of sparkly exhaustion. Stiles sprawled over Allison's lap and stared at the hole. There was absolutely no way that the horse could have possibly done it, but Stiles couldn't think of any other way it could have happened. Jeff Davis had backed out when it was maybe six feet deep, and then Kira fell in, and there was a death pit of glitter. Meanwhile, Derek was still bleeding out, hopefully from nothing too life-threatening, and Stiles was pretty sure he was going to have horseshoe shaped bruises on his chest. 

Maybe it wasn't too late to talk Mrs. Hale into pressing charges instead.

* * *

Being almost killed by Jeff Davis twice in a day was exhausting. 

As soon as he got home from Foxy Filly with a freshly ruined shirt and a pickup bed full of snot-nosed wyr brats who couldn't even manage basic courtesy, Derek dumped them on Laura, went upstairs and collapsed face-first onto his bed. The blankets still reeked of magic and Stiles, growing green mixed with hormones-and-dirt, but he didn't even have the energy to care. One of his lungs was still doing that weird prickling-stretch thing as it regenerated, and there was enough blood floating around in him from all the internal bleeding that he'd be choking it up for a week. All Derek wanted to do was sleep, and then maybe wake up and go back to sleep again. 

Which was probably why Stiles came tromping up the steps. His heart was beating even faster than usual, tripping all over itself with ever-present anxiety and just a hint of arousal. Scott and Allison followed, quieter, but still definitely present. Derek recognized their heartbeats. But where they stopped at the top of the stairs, Stiles kept stomping his way down the hall. When he knocked, he might have been trying to chop wood with his knuckles. 

Derek buried his head under his arms and grunted. "What?"

The door creaked open, practically blasting Stiles' scent into the room, laced with the other two where they thought they were being sneaky out of sight. _Wyr_. Derek had no idea why he even bothered with them. 

"So, uh, can we talk?" Stiles asked eloquently. 

Without looking up, Derek said, "I'm not telling Mom to let you out of the deal." 

Immediately, the anxiety-patter of Stiles' heart spiked up into outrage. " _What_? But we just almost got killed because of that—" His breath stopped. Heart slowed. "I mean, that's not what I wanted to talk about."

No skip, no lie. Not even a half-lie. Derek turned his head to look at Stiles, eyebrows furrowing. He didn't know what to say to that. 

"I need to apologize," Stiles continued, staring down at his hands. His scent was still thick with anxiety, current and past, and he was twisting his hands hard enough that the knuckles kept popping. "I didn't realize you were, you know. In the truck." Long, smooth skin stretched as Stiles leaned his head to the side an obscene amount, practically asking to have it chewed on. 

Derek stared. Swallowed. Stiles' neck was smudged with dirt and glitter, dotted with moles, and just really incredibly ridiculous. Something like that should have been buried in the pages of Neckz'n'Throats or some even seedier skinmag, not just floating out there for anyone to see. 

"The truck?" he repeated, wrenching his eyes away before he did something he regretted. Like bite it. Derek was better than that, no matter what Laura said about his taste in people. 

Stiles shrugged, drawing Derek's eye from his neck down to his shoulders, and no, that didn't help anything. "I shouldn't have been so much of an ass. Sorry." 

"But you think you should have been a little bit of an ass?" Derek couldn't help asking. 

It got him a grin, and it was almost as appealing as his shoulders. Stiles leaned against the doorway, hip cocked and arms crossed. "Well, you did almost get us killed, dude. Twice. And your horse is kind of an evil murderer. I think I'm entitled to being kind of a dick about it."

He wondered if it was worth glaring, but Stiles was still holding his head to the side, and really, someone needed to tell him about that. It wasn't going to be Derek, though. He flopped back over, hiding his face in his arms. Stiles couldn't smell a blush, thank goodness. "Whatever," he grumbled, as close to a snarl as he could manage with his face mashed firmly into the mattress. "Now leave me alone. I'm tired."

The floor creaked and, inexplicably, Stiles didn't leave. In fact, his heartbeat was shuffling closer. "Got a lot of blood loss to make up for, huh?"

"Something like that," Derek mumbled. "I just punctured a lung. Broke some bones. Almost died. Nothing Jeff Davis hasn't put me through before."

A pause, where he was pretty sure Stiles held his breath. Another shuffle. Something warm and furry tucked into the corner of his elbow, and then Stiles beat feet out of the room. He grabbed Scott and Allison on the way past, dragging them—questioning and reluctant—down the stairs so fast that their feet tripped, thuds and skids echoing down the hall. 

Derek waited until the crash and rattle of hurried retreat made it out the door and into the yard before daring to look. The teddy bear looked back at him, cheeks flushed slightly purple and with a chunk of pinkish fur over the chest, button eyes shining with magic. Medical teddy bears didn't help werewolves as much as they did wyr, but...

Well. 

After a long pause for consideration, Derek tucked it in closer, curled up and slept.


	2. The Incoherent Build-Up

Derek didn't wake up until the next morning, well after the feeding and stall cleaning. Midmorning sunlight shined through the bedroom curtains, streaming across the floor and up the wall. Rolling over onto his back, he looked down across his front. Blood had caked across his chest and what was left of his shirt, but there were now two clean patches instead of one. Derek frowned down at the hairless spots, two perfect circles right through his chest. It looked like someone had given him the world's worst wax job. The skin still felt tender and weirdly exposed, a little cold without hair to protect it. And now he was going to have to either fix it, or walk around with it like that. 

He really, really hated that horse. 

A note by his bed said that his mother had decided to let him sleep. Which was a little unusual, but getting stabbed so many times in one day was, too. Still, Derek knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. They usually tried to bite him. 

A shower, a fresh shave and another new shirt, and he was ready to face the day. His mom had left breakfast on the counter for him—a plate of deep fried everything and a pot of coffee ready to brew, all of them with notes warning off interlopers. Which was weird. Usually his mother would have just tucked one of his handkerchiefs around it so the scent would claim it. 

The reason for the notes became obvious when Derek went to make the coffee. Three new mugs hung on the tree, plain white ones with SS, AA and SM scribbled on the side in permanent ink, shoved in between Laura's zombie mug and Mason's _I must be this caffeinated before you may speak_. Derek stared at the new additions and all he could think was, _Great. Now we're adopting them._ There wasn't a rush of annoyance that usually accompanied his mother's strays, just a gentle stir of resignation. 

At least they would only be there for the summer. There wouldn't be time to get attached. That was something. 

Eating alone so late in the day was strange and uncomfortable enough that he rushed through, shoving food in his mouth and downing his coffee as fast as he could. He left them both half-finished before darting out into the warm sun. The yard was empty, but that was fine by him. 

He followed his nose to the water training course, where Laura had Scott shirtless and swimming beside a yearling pegasus to weigh her down. The horse—a clown-headed mare Derek was pretty sure he recognized as one he'd helped be born—honked her big red nose excitedly when she saw him, lifting up out of the water a few inches until Scott shoved her back down.

" _No_ , Tripoli. Swim," he said firmly, in a tone that was exactly like Laura when she tried to Big Sister someone. It worked better on the horse than it did on Derek. The honking stopped, and Tripoli resumed her careful swimming motions. 

Derek hopped up beside Laura on the elevated bench that served as a trainer's stool for the water course. Laura leaned forward on the edge of the bench, apparently focused completely on the two in the water lane. Every now and then her eyes flickered over to Derek, though, when she thought he wasn't looking. 

The bench was high enough that he could see Scott's knees where they bent around the anchors built into the wall, the little eddies of water as Tripoli worked to suppress her magic enough to stay waterbound. Pegasii had trouble with that. Their magic made them naturally want to float. On land they could keep it under control fairly easily, but water was buoyant enough that it tricked their instincts. Some pegasii never managed to become successful water racers, but the ones who did became champions. If they could get Tripoli in line, she had the bloodlines to take them all the way to the European Final. A clown-head pegasus hadn't won that in decades. 

Scott was actually good with her, for being a complete greenhorn. He kept his weight on her neck and shoulder, and never let her bounce out more than to the wing joint before pushing her down again. When he had to let go of the anchor, his swim stroke was solid, back muscles flexing smoothly as he swam alongside Tripoli on the course. Water sluiced over his tanned skin, sparkling where the sun hit it. The water washed away the horse- and wyr-sweat smells, but he could still make out the scent of exertion on them both. 

By Derek's side, Laura's weight shifted. First forward, then back, and then bumping right up against his thigh. "Looking good, aren't they?" she asked quietly, a hint of smugness edging into her tone. 

Derek yanked his eyes away from Scott, baring his teeth in Laura's direction. "Tripoli's really coming along."

"Sure she is." Laura snapped back, flashing her fangs. They were bigger, and sharper, and the only thing keeping Derek from flinching back was that he knew their mother would have a word or three if Laura actually bit him. "Scott's got good form, doesn't he? I think I might have him working the water runs all summer. He really seems to have... something. We need some more shirtless pretty boys who aren't family around here." 

" _Laura_ ," Derek hissed, glancing over at Scott hurriedly. He was almost positive they were far enough enough that Scott couldn't hear them, but he couldn't be sure. "He's half your age."

"He's actually only ten years younger, but I've got some pearls if you want to clutch them." Point made, Laura slid back on the bench, a queen on her perverted throne. "Mom got them mugs."

"Don't. They're not Liam and Mason. We don't get to keep them." Tripoli had hit the "finish line", a yellow painted bar across the bottom of the track, and was trying to back away from it. Derek tried to focus on how she was tossing her head and starting to float out of the water rather than how Scott's hands looked rubbing her neck soothingly. 

Silence lasted a beat too long before Laura answered, "Yeah. _I_ won't get attached," in a slow, deliberate tone that was probably supposed to mean something. 

Little brother senses tingling, Derek slipped down off the bench, before Laura could say what she was really thinking. No one ever wanted to hear what Laura was really thinking. It inevitably ended up being bad. "I'm going to go see what Mom wants me to do between now and lunch. See you later."

Laura waved at him, eyes still locked on Scott. Who, Derek noticed, was mostly out of the water, shoulders and chest flexing as he tried to weigh Tripoli down. He'd been picked up enough that Derek could tell he was just in a pair of dark blue swim trunks. They were so waterlogged they barely clung to his hips, showing a dark trail of hair leading down from his belly button.

Derek left at a run. 

Supposedly, his mother was in the office that day, working on breeding agreements with other farms. It was always something of a mess to trade horses for breeding. The necessary carrots calculation had to be exact, and on higher-end horses the trade was almost never worth it, since magical horse genetics were at least ninety percent luck. That meant there needed to be reams of disclaimers to keep people from suing just because they didn't get the princess wings they'd expected. It was the sort of mess could keep the alpha, Peter and Isaac holed up for a week just hashing out the details. 

Weirdly, though, when Derek got to the office it was empty, and all the scents were at least a day old. He tried following them, but they led back to the house, and there were too many trails leading _from_ the house to track any single one under the all-pervasive reek of horses and daily living. 

There was one that was strange, though. Sharper, edged with fear, right in the middle of the lawn. Derek looked around warily for cameras before bending down to smell the patch of earth where it was strongest. The grass had been dug up by hooves, but so had everywhere else, really. On a working ranch, there was no such thing as perfect landscaping. If it hadn't been for the scent, he wouldn't even have thought twice. 

Staying down low, Derek followed the trail. It cut across the dirt roads, zigged north around the stud barn and zagged across the pastures for the woods. He kept an eye out for one of his sisters as he moved. It was completely possible they'd terrified someone into running for the sole purpose of getting pictures of him with his ass in the air. To thwart that, he mostly stayed on two legs, only crouching down when he was in danger of losing the way. 

The runner went over the first fence with no problem, but looked like they'd gotten caught on landing. A bit of blood stained the grass, bright copper adding a new layer to the scent. They'd kept moving, though, and so did Derek. He followed it over three more fences and into the woods, tramping through a patch of singing lilies before the scent just vanished at the base of a new Ancient Redwood he'd helped plant just a few months earlier. The tree towered overhead, filling the clearing with the warm, slightly spicy smell of its bark. Just under that was the unmistakable mix of meat and sugar.

The man hanging from the tree limb was definitely dead. He dangled from the waist, face red from blood settling, eyes staring at nothing. A massive pastry had been stuck in his mouth, bulging his cheeks outward. A slow drop of cream filling slipped free from it to splatter on the ground. 

Derek swallowed back a rush of vomit, staggering away from the tree and into a patch of catmint. Immediately a hum of purrs rose up, covering the sound of dripping cream. Nothing would block the death-scent, though. His nose had locked on it; he'd probably have to stick his face in wolfsbane to make it go away. 

The words _don't taint the crime scene_ played through his head on repeat, something he'd probably heard on TV. It was all that kept him from howling for help. The pack was chaos at the best of times. They'd trample all over everything. 

Dropping down into the center of the catmint, Derek pulled his cell phone out of his pocket with a shaking hand. He tried to unlock it, but his claws were out, and the facial recognition wasn't advanced enough for werewolves. The emergency dial worked though.

His mom wasn't answering, which made him feel a little sick, so he tried the next number down. It rang twice before someone picked up. "Nine-One-One, what's your emergency?" a woman's voice asked, smooth and professional. 

"I'm— my name is Derek Hale, I'm at Three Moon Ranch, and I just found a dead body."

There was a beat of silence that went on just long enough that Derek wondered if she'd heard him. It was cut in two by a soft scratch of something against the receiver and a muffled, "Alex, we have another one. Get the Sheriff." Another shuffle of sound, and then she was back at full volume. "Sir, help is on the way, but I need to ask you some questions." 

For being in a quiet county, the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department was fast and professional. Derek hadn't even hung up before the sirens were audible. Which, for a werewolf, was still over a mile out, but it was reassuring. 

The deputy arrived with Derek's mother in the passenger seat. She was on four legs, hanging so far out the window that she slid around with every jostle and bump. As soon as the car stopped at the edge of the woods she tumbled out the window and raced straight to the catmint bed, nose working frantically. 

"Mom— mom, I'm fine," he tried to reassure her, pushing her away. Her fur dripped all over, leaving large splotches of horse-scented wet spots. "I was just following a scent and— _Mom_ , it's okay!" 

Alpha-red eyes glared. Then she headbutted him right in the chest, sending him flopping back on his ass so she could continue giving him a good sniff from armpits to ankles. Only after she'd ascertained that her middle child was whole and uninjured did she change back to a two-legged form. 

"Don't you _ever_ do that to me again," his mother snapped, baring a doubled set of fangs. Water dripped off her skin as she leaned over to snarl in his face. "Do you have any idea what I thought when Deputy Parrish pulled up and said someone had found a body in the woods? Laura said she saw you going that way, and I..." She wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders and yanked him into a hug. "You stupid, stupid puppy." 

Gratefully Derek leaned in, burying his face in the comforting scent of alpha and mother and safety. She growled quietly, tucking him up against her throat the way she had when he'd been a pup. The catmint went quiet, leaving just the sound of her heart in his ears. 

The moment was broken when an awkward voice stuttered, "Ah, Mrs. Hale, do you mind...?" 

They looked up to see the deputy staring firmly at the ground, holding out a large damp towel. Allison hovered behind him in a wet swimsuit, looking torn between staring and copying the deputy. Embarrassment-slash-arousal joined the mélange of greenery and death and alpha.

Rising gracefully, Talia accepted the towel, wrapping it around her torso so the wyr could stop pretending they didn't know what skin was. "Derek, where is it?"

He stayed in the catmint and just pointed at the Ancient Redwood. "Up there. In the branches." 

Deputy Parrish and his mother left to go investigate, but Allison sank down onto the edge of the catmint. A tabby-striped blossom mewled and rubbed up against her, winding around her wrist until she was firmly snagged. She petted it absently, scratching behind the leaves and letting loose a sudden spike of mint in the air. "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah. I... yeah." Derek tried to make himself relax, shoulders, arms, back, legs, fists. Hackles lowered, tail untucked. The alpha was there. His _mother_ was there. She'd take care of everything. "I never saw a dead body before. It startled me. That's all." He'd _been_ the dead body a few times, thanks to Jeff Davis and his itchy horn, but it was different on the other side of things. The days when werewolves lived short, violent lives, constantly on the lookout for hunters were long gone. 

Allison unwound the catmint from her arm and edged closer, until her leg and shoulder pressed against his. Her hair dripped all over his shirt, and she smelled like water and horse sweat and mint, but under that was a hint of alpha-wolf-fur from his mother. Derek swallowed and let his weight sag into her. He wasn't sure if she knew what she was doing, but he'd take what he could get just then. Especially since she didn't seem interested in talking any more. 

It was a while before Deputy Parrish and his mother came back from the tree. His mother gave him a stern look before dropping her towel and shifting back onto four feet to dash off. In the distance Derek could just make out the sound of more police vehicles. No sirens, but their engines had a specific sort of purr he'd learned to recognize when he'd been breaking curfew back in high school. 

Parrish stared fixedly at his notebook until she was gone, pen scribbling circles. "Thank you for calling us, Mr. Hale," he said, and to his credit he didn't even sound very choked up. "I've got some more officers on the way, but I wanted to get some notes from you right now. Can you tell me the events leading up to the discovery of the body?" 

Derek nodded, looking down at his knees. One of the catmint plants had shed all over his jeans, leaving a wide swath of furry white petals across his calf. "I was looking for my mother in the office, and I noticed a weird scent..." 

As he told the story, Allison wrapped her hand around his and squeezed. It shouldn't have been as comforting as it was. She was just adopted pack, practically brand new, and didn't even want to be there. But the pressure around his palm made it easier to talk without stumbling over his words. 

The deputy nodded as he took notes, expression professionally sympathetic. It usually would have set off Derek's bullshit radar, but he smelled that way too. That meant more to a werewolf than an understanding frown. "And did you know the victim?" 

It took Derek a second of thought before he shook his head. "I don't think so. I didn't really look close at his face, but I didn't recognize the scent. It just smelled frightened."

The pen scribbled on. "According to your mother, his name was Dan. He was here to buy a pocket pony companion for his hedgehog. Still doesn't ring a bell?" When Derek shook his head again, Parrish grimaced. Off to the south one of the main gates squeaked open, and the police engine noise closed in. "Do you mind coming with me to the station so we can get your official statement out of the way? It's going to take them a while to process the scene."

"I'll come with you," Allison jumped in hurriedly, biting her lip. "I mean, if you want me to? I could go get Cora or Peter instead, if you want..."

Derek cut her off with a shake of his head. "You're—this is fine."

Allison squeezed his hand again. It helped.

* * *

Derek was sad and the corpse was hung in the tree with care...

Jeff Davis liked the Ancient Redwood. He liked a lot of things. He liked treats, and fire and making Derek bleed. Liked things that made Derek sad. He remembered other times he'd made Derek sad...

_Derek's girlfriend perched on the pasture fence, kicking her feet idly and holding a Macy's bag full of name brand clothes at bargain prices. She was talking to Cora about school work, offering to help her with her piano practice. Normally Jeff Davis wouldn't have minded that. They were old, old, old people, and women could talk to women sometimes. He'd already kicked her for that anyway, and it hadn't helped._

_But Derek sat beside her, smiling and happy, and that just was not. Allowed. Derek was too pretty when he was sad. His eyes got crinkly, and his mouth went soft and the sign on his back saying "stab here" got a nicer font. When Derek was happy, the sign went away. The target on his chest got small and hard to hit. He ran faster, too._

_This could not be allowed._

_So Jeff Davis did was he did best. He trotted over to the fence, nudging Paige with his horn. And then with his teeth. And hooves. Lots of hooves, painted pretty pretty alpha red, which was appropriate because Jeff Davis was the alpha alphas._

_Cora shouted, trying to pull Paige out of the way while Derek grabbed his halter. He yanked Jeff Davis' head around hard, making him stagger away. That was okay, though. It gave Jeff Davis a perfect angle to stab Derek right in the bullseye. He went down with a bloody gurgle, just like he always did, the silly wolf._

_And then it got even better. The Love of His Life, Peter, beautiful Peter came running from the house, trailing clouds of glory. Jeff Davis yanked his horn free of Derek's ribcage and whinnied. He managed to grind his hooves into Paige one more time as he trotted over, tail high and neck arched._

_Derek was going to cry for weeks, and Peter would probably be the one to take care of Jeff Davis for all of those weeks. Grooming and cleaning and feeding and exercising! All of it!_

_Jeff Davis was so proud. He had the best ideas._

* * *

As it turned out, finding dead people in trees was not a common feature of ranch life. At least, that was what everyone hurried to reassure Allison after she and Derek got back from the Sheriff's office. Corpses were, as a matter of fact, very rare in Beacon Hills in general. Having a local werewolf pack tended to keep the rowdier sorts under control, and the Sheriff handled the rest.

Dead bodies in Beacon Hills started to get a lot less rare, though. Reports of more bodies started popping up in the news. All of them died in weird ways—baked in a pie, stuffed with a cactus, and one poor woman apparently had her blood replaced with glitter glue. They were scattered around town with no real pattern that Allison could spot. The Sheriff went around stern-faced, and Stiles started getting that worried twist between his eyebrows that meant his dad was working too much. 

In spite of all of that, Allison's sentence to work at Three Moon Ranch started to go much more smoothly. Or as smoothly as anything on a werewolf-run ranch could. Three weeks went by in what seemed like no time at all. It became almost a comfortable routine, waking up, grabbing a piece of fruit and driving out to the county limits. She found herself spending a lot of time with Derek and the babies, halter training and teaching them to handle a lead and some weight on their back. He was surprisingly good at it; the foals liked him, and some of the yearlings followed him around like he had candy in his pocket. Mostly because he usually did. Allison got used to how soft Derek's voice got when he was soothing a horse. Sometimes it even soothed her, when she was having a bad day. Not that she'd ever tell Derek. 

With his nose and ears, he probably already knew anyway. 

He also looked really, really good in riding boots and a tight shirt. Allison might have had two boyfriends, but she could appreciate the muscles on a man capable of picking up a filly to introduce her to the water run. Scott and Stiles Derek-watched too, so it definitely didn't count against her. Sometimes when they got breaks they did it together. It was a bonding experience. 

She should have known it couldn't last. 

Allison knew something was wrong when she pulled in next to the Jeep and the ranch was dark and dead silent. It was already almost five. The horses should have been fed and the sprinters on the track warming up. Definitely the barns should have been lit. They _never_ went completely dark—there were too many horses that glowed for that. The Hales sometimes saved on electricity bills that way. 

Breathing slowly in order to keep back the panic, Allison got her taser out of her purse and checked to make sure it was charged. Technically she wasn't supposed to be armed while on Hale property. Mrs. Hale would have growled at her for it. But if nothing was wrong, then no one needed to know. 

Charged and ready, she made her way to the barn. 

It was black as a nightmare inside, only the tiniest bit of light leaking through the windows to keep it from being pitch. She tried the light switch by the door, and wasn't at all surprised when it didn't work. That would have been too easy. 

Without a better choice, Allison paced down the row of stalls, ears straining in the absence of light. For a fleeting second, she wished she had a werewolf's nose for an extra layer of information. Every stall door was closed up top, which explained why none of the horses were shining. She could hear them, though, breath fast and hard, snorts of worry mixed with the occasional scrape of a hoof or whinny.

She kept going until she reached one stall that sounded off, a big box in the corner. Like the others it was closed up, but when she put her ear to it there was a quiet grunt, a smack of something soft. Stepping back, she lifted her taser to the ready position and unlatched the stall door. Just like her mother had taught her, she yanked open the stall, flicked on her flashlight app—

—and found herself staring at a giant, four-legged chicken. Beady black eyes reflected the light. Its beak gleamed razor-sharp, wattle dangling almost to its knees. 

It pranced in place, horn— _horn?_ —dripping blood. Allison squeezed the trigger and dived out of the way as the chicken roared past. One of the lines hit it in the chest and it reared up, shrieking like a banshee. Tiny green wings flared in the beam of the phone, cracking the wooden door where they slammed into it, shrapnel flying. She screamed and ducked, taser and phone slipping from her hands. With one more scream of protest, the chicken leaped past and galloped away, hooves— _hooves?_ —sparking where they struck the cement.

"What the _hell_..." Allison leaned against the shattered stall door, staring into the dark. Her phone was a thin, useless beam of light, but she still picked it up to sweep around, as if it would uncover something that could explain what had happened. 

In the stall behind her, someone groaned. "Did you kill it?" a wet, bubbly voice asked, coughing. "Because if you didn't, I'm going to." 

Erica was half buried in the straw, chest caved in so sharply Allison could see the broken bones of her ribs under her bloody shirt. Some of them had punched through the skin and cloth, glistening wet in the light. She grinned and coughed, fangs pink with blood. "I see why Derek gets so pissy about dying. It kind of sucks." 

"Oh my _God_." Allison hurried to help Erica get laid out flat. Her ribs weren't the only things that were broken. She had a shattered knee, too, and the fingers of one hand were bent wrong. In the blue-white light of the app, she looked closer to dead than the actual corpse from before had. "Do I need to call Mrs. Hale?"

"Just let me heal," Erica answered tiredly, laying her head back in a pile of straw Allison hastily bundled into a pillow. "They'll come looking when they're done." 

Gently, Allison smoothed back her hair. It was sticky with warm blood, but she'd seen the others do it sometimes after someone got hurt. It seemed to be a wolf thing, grooming to make an injured packmate feel better. "When they're done with what?"

Bones ground gently as they started popping back into place. Erica hissed, arching her back as a rip snapped and crackled. "Getting the power back on," she said raggedly, eyes glowing gold. "I was supposed to guard the barn until it came back. Got jumped and dragged into the stall." Her hand, the one that wasn't broken, waved through the air. "He redecorated for us."

The stall had been turned into some kind of nest. A giant bundle of straw had been kicked into a rough bowl that was littered with squashed cartons of eggs and ragged green feathers. Blood and egg yolks painted the walls. Across the back wall someone had carved a message into the wood:

_DETH THRET_   
_!!!!!_   
_SIGND_   
_RLY A CHIKN_

Somehow, Allison suspected it hadn't been an actual chicken. "Did you see who did this...?" She wrapped her hand around Erica's good one, letting her squeeze while the bones of the other hand popped back into place. "I mean, someone had to plant all this and put the... horse? in here to attack you." 

"Don't know." Erica's breathing got heavier, her teeth sharper with pain. The rib that was sticking out flexed and started sinking back into her chest, other ribs cracking around it to make room. "It looked like a horse in a chicken costume? But I didn't see who put it in there. Could be anyone." 

Something hummed, and the overhead lights clicked on. Allison winced at the sudden rush of light burning the back of her eyeballs. It actually made Erica look even worse, too, which was no mean feat. Though her chest was almost entirely put back together, the bruising hadn't been dealt with. It left her a werewolf-shaped mess of purple and red. 

"Erica?" Scott's voice carried through the barn, bouncing off the roof and making more than one horse neigh in answer. "Power's back on!" 

"We're down here!" Allison yelled, before Erica could try and hurt herself even more. "She's been injured! Get Mrs. Hale!" 

Footsteps sounded on cement, and then the stall door was pushed even wider. "Holy crap," Scott breathed, taking in the state of the stall with wide brown eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm great, what does it look like?" Erica growled, voice too thick and broken with pain to have any actual heat. "Just do what your girlfriend said and go get the alpha, will you?"

"But she's—"

"Already here," Mrs. Hale cut in smoothly, nudging Scott out of the doorway. Her eyes flicked over the walls, then down to Erica, a red rim glowing around the edge of her irises. Then she slipped in, settling down into straw gracefully. "Someone call the Sheriff's department, then go to the house and tell them that I won't be able to help make breakfast. You'll all have to fend for yourselves for once. Allison, the police will want to take your statement too, so eat while you can."

Gratefully, Allison moved from her spot by Erica's head, letting Mrs. Hale have it and Erica's hand. Immediately dark lines started running up her arm, and Erica relaxed like she'd been given a shot of werewolf morphine. Which, in a way, she had. "I'll call," she said, climbing to her feet and out of the stall as fast as she could. "Come on, Scott." 

Allison hadn't realized how thick the air had been in the barn until she stepped outside and took a breath that wasn't laden with blood and hay. Her hand was surprisingly steady as she unlocked her phone and dialed in the emergency. Blood smeared over her screen as she punched in the numbers. She couldn't find it in her to care. There were worse things than blood on a smartphone. Blood on a person, for example. 

The call went fast. Everyone at the Sheriff's office knew her as Stiles' girlfriend, and George—the man who answered—didn't bother wasting time asking for extraneous details. Attack at Three Moon Ranch, werewolf injured but healing, officers on the way, ambulance being rerouted. 

Done. 

She slumped by the barn door, bracing herself on her knees and concentrating on the air running in and out of her lungs. With the lights on she could see the hoof prints in the dirt, the tangle of her taser where it had finally fallen loose during the great escape. Chips in the edge of the concrete. A thousand little details, a thousand things to focus on that weren't how lucky it was that she'd arrived when she had. 

Werewolves were hard to kill, but they weren't indestructible. If the horse had gotten a hoof in Erica's skull, they'd be looking at another death and not just assault with a deadly chicken. 

A warm hand pressed against the small of her back. "Are you okay?" Scott asked quietly. He pressed against her side, warm and solid, worry tight in his muscles "You're not hurt too, right?" 

"No, just..." Allison forced herself upright, lifting her chin until she _felt_ in control. Spending so much time with werewolves was making her too aware of body language, and just then she didn't want her body to scream _weak_ or _helpless_. "Someone tried to kill her. That's insane." 

"Maybe it was an accident?" Scott's hand stayed on her back, and maybe he was picking up things from the werewolves too, because he obviously wasn't buying her act. "A joke gone really wrong?"

"Maybe." Instinct said no. Not with the power being out, and someone taking the time to carve a message on the wall. Just because it was a really stupid message didn't mean it was somehow less threatening. 

That thought tripped her memory, bring back thoughts of another death threat she'd seen. "What about..." The question was so ridiculous she couldn't make herself finish it. "No, never mind." 

"What is it?" Scott's jaw set stubbornly, almost belligerent. His hand was still gentle though, and when he edged in closer there was no force in it. "You think you know who did this?"

Allison shook her head and let herself lean into his shoulder. In the distance she could hear someone arguing with Cora, and the two youngest pack members—Mason and Liam—were jogging from pasture to pasture, probably doing something important, or at least something they'd been told to do. There were werewolves all over. If it was Jeff Davis, one of them would have smelled him. "It's stupid. Let's just go." 

Scott's nose scrunched, the way it did sometimes when he wanted to keep arguing. It made Allison's chest feel like it was filled with warm, snuggly fur, instead of the usual bones and blood vessels and easily broken hearts. Smiling a little, she pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and wrapped his hand in hers. "It's fine. I just had a weird thought, that's all. Let's go."

Every light in the main house was lit, though it looked as deserted as everywhere else until Allison and Scott made their way to the kitchen. Stiles was in there, holding an ice pack to his ankle and a teddy bear in his lap. It was blue around the ankle, suggesting a minor sprain, but the color was leeching away quickly. That wasn't surprising. Stiles had managed to hurt himself more days than not. The teddy bears were getting a workout. 

They settled in at the table. Scott slid onto one of the chairs, pulling Stiles' ankle over so he could check it out under the ice. Allison wrapped herself around Stiles from behind and ran her fingers through his hair. There was a little bruise on his forehead, but the teddy bear had mostly taken care of it. She kissed her fingertips and pressed it to the fading bruise anyway. Everyone knew kisses helped things heal; it was one of those things everyone did at least one science project on, like the baking soda and vinegar volcano. 

"So," Stiles said slowly, "not that I'm complaining about the impromptu cuddle-fest, but what's wrong?" He reached behind him, awkwardly cupping the back of Allison's head. "Because you guys only get like this when something's happened."

Swallowing hard, Allison leaned in closer and pressed her forehead against Stiles' shoulder. "It's just—"

"That you should be _working_? Why yes, I think it is." Of course, that was when Peter had to come in, because he was a master of ruined moments. He brushed right past the table and headed toward the refrigerator. "If I recall correctly, aren't you three supposed to be elbow-deep in glitter by now?" he asked idly, pulling out ingredients for what Allison assumed was going to be breakfast. "The stalls won't get any cleaner if you— _ha_ , stall, you know. I wonder what my dear sister would say about your avoidance. " 

Allison scowled in his direction, while Scott and Stiles exchanged uncomfortable looks. "Mrs. Hale knows we're here. She said to tell you she can't help with breakfast."

The milk sat down with a thud. Peter turned around and crossed his arms, cocking a hip against the counter. "Oh? Is my sister derelict in her duties as well?"

"There was a thing in the barn," Scott admitted through a pained wince. "Someone attacked Erica. Mrs. Hale has to stay to talk to the police, so she can't help cook breakfast."

Peter processed that for a moment, chin tilted thoughtfully. "The barn?" When Allison nodded, he huffed a long-suffering sigh. "As always, I have to do everything around here. Thank you, Scott." With flounce worthy of a silent movie starlet, he turned and stormed out. Allison, Scott and Stiles were left staring around the empty kitchen.

"Does anyone know what just happened?" Allison asked the room at large, expecting the usual round of shrugs. 

Instead, she got, "Peter's full of glitter shit," from Stiles. He lifted up his teddy bear, examining the color of the injured paw before rotating his ankle on Scott's lap. "I don't know why Mrs. Hale keeps him around, even if he is family. The only good thing about him is his cocoa, and I'd take a packet if it meant not having to deal with Peter staring at me while I drink it." 

Allison choked on a laugh. "That's one way to put it." 

"Eloquent, that's me." Stiles grinned, tipping his head back to look at her. "So, you want to tell me what happened in the barn, before I have to get it from Isaac? Erica's okay, right?" 

Allison's smile fell away. "Yeah," she managed to say, almost strangled by the knot in her throat. 

"She's hurt pretty badly," Scott said quietly, looking down at Stiles' leg. "But, you know. Werewolf. Allison, you wanna...?" 

She nodded and closed her eyes, starting to speak. Stiles played with her hair, and Scott leaned enough that he could press his leg against hers. It made it easier to explain what had happened—the way she'd been attacked, the weird messages on the wall. Erica. The whole thing had only taken a few minutes, but it was so sharp in her mind that it felt like it should have been hours. 

"It was just so _weird_ ," she finished weakly, sitting up to look at them. "Just—the chicken, and the writing on the wall and— Erica's chest was _caved in_. What would _do_ that? It doesn't make any sense!"

"Jeff Davis," Stiles answered, completely out of nowhere. "I _knew_ that horse was evil." 

In the other chair Scott just nodded at first, rubbing Stiles ankle absently. "Yeah, he's pretty—wait, what?" His head whipped around to stare at Stiles. "You think the _horse_ tried to kill Erica? What, did he lock a giant chicken in a stall? There's easier ways to kill someone." 

"He poopped a death threat," Stiles reminded them, as if anyone really needed to be reminded of that tidbit. " _And_ he tried to kill Kira. A pit of glitter doesn't just appear out of..." He caught himself, apparently remembering the details of that particular attack. "Okay, it did kind of appear out of nowhere. But we _saw_ him shove Kira in. If she hadn't gotten a good grip on the wall, she'd have drowned. Suffocated. Whatever it is you do in glitter."

"I think Jeff Davis was in the stall with Erica, too," Allison admitted, biting her lip. It sounded impossible. But she couldn't get past the sight of blood dripping off a horn, or the way Erica's bones had popped as she'd healed. _Someone_ had done it. At least the horse was a known entity. The idea that there was someone behind Jeff Davis, pulling his strings, was just too horrible to contemplate. "I didn't get a really good look, but chickens don't have horns. And they're usually not that big." 

Usually Stiles' more off-the-wall ideas found traction, especially when Allison supported them, but Scott was frowning. "It's just a horse, guys," he said gently, in a _monsters don't live under the bed, they're not good pets_ voice. "I know everyone here's got some weird grudge, and—okay, Jeff Davis was really hard to control, but he's gone. Ran away. Anyway, horses don't try to kill people."

There weren't enough eyeballs in the world to satisfy Allison's need for a disbelieving stare. "Except he _did_ ," she reminded Scott, in case he'd somehow forgot seeing Derek get stabbed through the chest. Twice

Head bobbing in agreement, Stiles added, "He _keeps killing Derek_." 

"Not _maliciously_ ," Scott insisted. "Not like premeditated murder. Horses don't do that. They can't be _evil_. They're horses." 

He'd gone from upset to earnest, and it was just too early in the morning for Allison to deal with that. She groaned loudly and draped herself forward over Stiles' shoulder again. This was exactly why she hadn't said anything. 

Stiles patted her head reassuringly, and she could practically feel him rolling his eyes. "Great. Just great. You realize you just guaranteed that we're going to be stabbed in our beds by a murder pony, right?" he asked. "Because that's the only thing that could possibly come out of saying that. I hope you're happy, Scott." 

"Scott! Stiles! Allison!" Laura's voice range through the building, rough with a growl. "Mucking waits for no bloody crime scene! Hup hup hup!" 

Wood scraped tile as Scott pushed back his chair and carefully lowered Stiles' foot to the floor. "We've got chores." Unexpectedly, his arm slid over Allison's shoulder, squeezing her and Stiles sideways into a hug. "Erica's going to be okay. The Sheriff will figure out what's going on, and everything will be fine." 

"Get moving or I'll make you oil the robots!" Laura yelled.

Allison turned her head enough to smile and kiss Scott's cheek. "You're right." She straightened, reeling Stiles upwards too and dragging them both toward the door. "Come on, we don't want robot duty." 

They came after easily, falling into step so she could sling an arm around each of them. Outside the sky was well on its way to dawn, and the horses were complaining about being off- schedule. She just needed to get her head back on track. 

Scott was right. Horses couldn't be evil, and it would take something really evil to do this sort of damage. That was all there was to it.

* * *

Blood still dripped from Jeff Davis' horn. Derek's blood. That was usually nice. Jeff Davis liked killing Derek. Derek was pretty when he was sad, and lately there weren't that many things that made him sad other than stabbing him. But this time, there was no joy in the act. Only disappointment. He'd hoped the Love of His Life, Peter, would have come for him instead. But that was okay. Peter was no doubt somewhere doing something important. Jeff Davis understood. But he remembered...

_Peter yanked the comb through Jeff Davis' mane, fighting to get the knots untangled while wearing a fashionable ensemble purchased at Macy's. When that broke, he tried his claws next, sawing through the knots. Or trying to. The cream rinse he was using was all over; Jeff Davis' mane refused to bow to things like conditioner, or soap, or logic. Like the rest of him, it would not be contained by such mundanities!_

_"You idiot horse, how do you get into such a mess," he muttered loudly. "I'm starting to think Derek's right. We should feed you to a mountain lion."_

Jeff Davis knew he really meant I love you, you magnificent stallion of a stallion _. That was because he and Peter shared something deep. Something special. Something blood-soaked and smelling faintly of cheese. He closed his eyes and shuddered happily, leaning into Peter's touch._

_They didn't get quiet moments together often. Peter was far too grand to lower himself to mere groom. But for some reason, no one else wanted to. It might have had something to do with Jeff Davis getting into the house and accidentally trapping himself in the third floor bathroom for half the day and then stabbing the entire pack on his way out. It was probably because Peter just loved him that much._

_Alas, he knew they couldn't be together. Peter was forever stuck under the tyrannical thumb of his sister, Talia. As smart and suave and interesting as Peter was, there was no place for him there. None of them understood him. None of them respected him. None of them_ deserved _him. He hadn't had a chance to prove himself, and they wouldn't let him. They were all too selfish, too attached to "living", whatever that was. There was no room in their story for Peter's greatness._

_And that was when Jeff Davis knew. When he had an idea. His best idea ever. Better than stabbing Derek, better than ballistic hay bales or drowning Cora in the water trough. If there was no room for Peter's amazing perfection in their story..._

_He would just have to make some room._

* * *

"Scott! What are you doing up there?" 

Scott edged over the corner of the roof on hands and knees that were ragged messes of fresh cuts and scrapes. The shingles burned his skin, but no worse than the sun on his shoulders, and it was the safest way to look down at a scowling Derek two stories below. 

It was weirdly comforting to see. Ever since Erica was hurt in the barn two weeks ago, Derek's face had been more worried than grumpy. He hadn't realized he'd missed the glower so much. _Everyone_ had been on edge, but seeing Derek's face without the usual storm clouds around it meant the world was very, very wrong. 

At least part of the reason why Derek was angry was probably because he was dripping wet. His hair was plastered to his head, and his shirt was soaked through in patches, as if being two sizes too small to hold Derek's muscles wasn't enough punishment. 

Belatedly, Scott realized he hadn't answered yet, and rushed to yell, "Your mom told me to clean the gutters and reseal the second floor siding?" In case Derek missed it he held up the wide painter's brush to back up his claim. It was so heavy with the sealant that it dripped all over the shingles in big white splotches. Scott was pretty sure it wouldn't hurt them. At least, he hoped it wouldn't hurt them. There'd been a lot of dripping, and not all of it had been on him. He was glad he'd taken off his shirt before he'd climbed up, or it would have been completely ruined. "She said it's due? And Laura said something about having been waiting on it, I think." 

At a distance it was kind of hard to tell, but Derek got scowlier. His eyebrows pinched together, and his teeth were bared. Scott didn't need Sentient Creature Psyche to know that was a bad thing in a werewolf. "Is Stiles up there with you?" he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. 

"... No?" Just in case, Scott checked, but there was definitely a Stiles-less gap in the view. He could have been on the other side, lying down to avoid being seen, but that would have been ridiculous even for Stiles. "Isn't he supposed to be helping Liam clean the water run?" 

There were definitely flashing eyes happening. Werewolf stuff was occurring, with the forehead and the ears and wherever the hell Derek's eyebrows went. "Yes. He was," Derek bit out around a mouth full of more teeth than any single mouth should ever hold. "But _someone_ is throwing water balloons, and guess what they smell like."

Trick question. It had to be. "Water?" 

" _Stiles_." 

That didn't sound right. "They're water balloons. There's no way you can be sure Stiles is the scent on them," Scott pointed out, fairly reasonably, he thought. He hadn't spent a whole lifetime around werewolves, but he was pretty sure they couldn't smell someone on a tiny piece of rubber that had water bursting all over it. 

Well, maybe Mrs. Hale could, but that was probably a mom thing instead of a werewolf thing. Moms were more than magic, they were _moms_. 

By the way Derek's face scrunched up and smoothed back into human, Scott must have been right. Without the beta face on, Derek looked just a little pathetic. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up in sad little spikes. "If he's not the one with water balloons, then he and Liam are missing. Help me find them." 

"But I have to—"

"You can finish that later."

He'd probably have to, too. Glumly, Scott turned to stick his paint brush in the cleaner and close the bucket so it wouldn't dry out and get gummy. Then he found the ladder and swung himself down, taking the rungs much more easily than he would have a few weeks before. Lacrosse was good for keeping in shape, but working at Three Moon was _killer_. By the end of the summer, he'd have abs. And then he'd lose those abs when he went to college and traded carrot crates for books and pizza, but at least he'd know what it _felt_ like to have abs. 

Derek was waiting for him at the bottom. Up close, the way the water affected his shirt was even more unfortunate. It _clung_. Scott could see his nipples, and a little patch of black hair where his collar dipped. His forearms were terrible, too, thick and veiny and...

Scott swallowed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and hoping his sudden chub wasn't obvious. "So," he managed to squeak out, "what's the plan?" 

Because of course nothing could be secret when you were with a werewolf, Derek's nose wrinkled. But by some miracle of long-forgotten mercy, he didn't say anything about whatever hormones Scott had dripping off of him. "You take north. Check all the buildings, especially everywhere there's an accessible faucet. When you find him, tell me where he is, or have someone howl."

"You expect me to hand over my boyfriend to you? Just like that?" Scott had to work to keep his expression flat. "Why should I?"

"Because if you find him, I'll let you throw the first balloon."

Scott didn't even have to think about it. "Deal."

Nodding, Derek stalked off. His jeans were so tight, Scott wasn't sure if the water was the reason they were sticking so close to his skin, or if that was just the way they were. He watched closely, just in case he could spot the difference. 

Unfortunately Derek moved out of sight before the investigation was complete, and Scott turned to start his search with a circuit around the house. No matter what Derek said, he was pretty sure that Stiles wasn't involved in any sort of water balloon fight. He never would have left Scott out if he were, either as a casualty of war or as a co-conspirator. There were a lot of other options, though, and he knew exactly where most of them would be.

Once he'd verified that there weren't any suspicious piles of water balloons near the outside faucets, he tried the next obvious choice. It a place where artistry and mayhem combined, where Stiles was inevitably drawn to: the kitchen. 

Scott was in no way surprised to find it had been converted into a water-based armory. Canvas bags loaded with water balloons waited by the door, ready to be picked up. A baby water dragon nestled on the table in between super soakers and water guns.

"About time you showed up, asshole," Stiles called from the sink, carefully loading a deflated balloon with something from a very small, very _colorful_ jar. He finished spiking the balloon and handed it over to Liam, who carefully filled it with water and added it to a bag at his feet. "What took so long? Where's Mrs. Hale?" 

Scott edged carefully around the loaded table, with its water- and dragon-based weaponry. It was an amazing set-up. Scott wasn't sure whether to be impressed or terrified. "I don't know where she is. How permanent is that?"

" _Really_ permanent," Liam said, just a little viciously. He snapped a balloon knotting it off and dropped it into the bag. 

But Stiles was turning around, still holding the jar of dye like the unexploded colorbomb it was. Whatever was in the jar had stained Stiles' fingertips violently purple. Other splotches of color littered his body—a gradient of blue streaked across his forehead, red on his cheek, green on his shirt. Liam was a victim of misfires too; his hands were stained multi-colored to the elbow, and a large patch of his shirt had gone from yellow to green. "What do you mean, you don't know? She went to get _you_."

"Maybe she got distracted hunting Derek?" Scott asked doubtfully. "He was pretty soaked." Before it was out of his mouth, he regretted even suggesting it. Mrs. Hale wasn't the sort to get distracted like that. She might have taken a lucky shot if it presented itself, but she never would have gotten _distracted_.

Stiles' mouth pulled to the side doubtfully. "Allison's on Derek duty. Mrs. Hale was going to go up on the roof to get you, then _get_ you, and then you and I were going to go hunt Peter." His eyes skimmed down Scott, obviously noticing how he was neither dripping wet nor painted. 

"You don't think she'd go after Peter on her own, would she?" Liam asked, filling the last spiked balloon before turning around. He was only a year younger than Scott, but practically new as a werewolf. With that and the dye on him he looked closed to the start of high school than the end. "She promised."

"Mrs. Hale's the alpha. She can go back on her promise if she wants to." Stiles brought his thumb up to his lips, gnawing on the nail. It left a purple smear across his cheek and mouth, up the tip of his nose where his knuckles brushed against it. "But she really wanted to see us ambush Peter. That's who the dye bombs are for." 

Scott toed the bag of water balloons. It was a lot of effort for someone to arrange and then abandon a plan like that, and Mrs. Hale didn't strike him as the sort. Worry nudged the back of his brain. Things had been weird, and the memory of Erica bleeding in the straw was bright and fresh. She was better now, but it still made him queasy. "Maybe we should go find her. Just in case. Liam, could you follow her trail?" 

Blue eyes flashed to bright yellow. Liam grinned, showing off his upper and lower fangs. "I think I could do that." 

They headed out the door in a single file line. Scott scooped up the water dragon, just in case, and Stiles and Liam both took bags of balloons with solemn expressions. It lasted for about three seconds after they got outside and they had to rush to avoid Isaac coming around the corner with a panda pony on a lead. They darted to the nearest bush for hiding, giggling like kindergartens. Even Scott found himself grinning and breathless, enough that he pulled out his inhaler and took a puff before they moved on to the next hiding spot. 

Under Scott arm, the water dragon wiggled and spread its wings, picking up on the excitement. He tickled its chin to keep it from squeaking as they edged past the yellow pickup. Once they were sure the coast was clear, they started a relay of darting from tree to tree, Liam leading with his nose while Scott and Stiles trailed behind. There was one moment of worry when they passed the training ring. Laura was giving a polka-dotted unicorn a rub down dangerously close to the fence they were hiding behind. At one point the wind shifted and her head came up, but she never turned and spotted them as they scrambled to the safety of the far side of the barn.

Liam led them all the way to the main barn, where the office was located in a little side-building that was attached only by a walkway and an awning. In the bright sunlight, everything seemed normal at first. There weren't any signs of a fight, or any obvious blood splatter. No horses were running around trying to stomp on things. Glitter death pits were very obviously absent. 

It was also quiet, and apparently abandoned. No one was around looking at the horses, or taking them out for exercise. There weren't even any cars in the parking lot. Three Moon Ranch was a busy place. _Someone_ should have been there. 

Unease made Scott's chest tight. He edged up past Liam, putting a hand on his shoulder in passing. "You two stay here," he murmured. When Stiles made a noise that sounded like the start of an objection, he added, "To stand guard, in case she's trying to ambush _us_. I'll be back in a second. If you see her coming with a balloon, howl for help."

"Howl," Stiles said flatly, but Liam was already nodding, because of course it made sense to a werewolf.

"And then?" Liam asked, just a shade too eagerly. His teeth were still out.

"And then run like crazy and ditch the ammunition before Derek catches you with it," Scott said, watching Liam's expression go from excited to wary in the space it took to finish the sentence. Stiles was still looking mutinous, so Scott kissed his cheek before heading for the office as casually as possible for someone carrying a fully armed water dragon. It trembled under his arm as he pushed open the door, but didn't make any noise. Wherever it had come from, it was well trained at least. 

The office was all shadows, with only a little light leaking through the door in a beam. It looked like it had been designed as a shed, or a stand-alone stall. No windows, only one very wide door, open beams under the roof. It was nothing but shadows surrounding the narrow path light and dancing dust motes. Carefully, he pushed the door open a little wider. Golden sunlight poured in, shining over an overturned desk. Scattered papers drifted on a puddle of water that stretched back into the room. Somewhere out of sight a tap was running. 

Swallowing hard, Scott stepped in. He pressed his back to the door frame and balanced his dragon on his hip. "Mrs. Hale?" One hand slid along the wall, feeling for the light switch he knew had to be there. "Mrs. Hale, are you in here? Stiles said you were looking for me?" 

Toward the very back, someone growled. Red eyes flashed in the dark, higher and wider than Scott would have expected for even an alpha. Smoke drifted through the dark, lit by sparks like from a wood fire. 

Scott could barely breathe. One slow step at a time he inched close in, dragon at the ready. The eyes didn't move, either back or closer, which he took to be a good sign. "Mrs. Hale?" he tried again, free hand sliding along the wall. His fingertips brushed plastic rectangle of the switch. "Talia? I'm going to turn on the light now." 

Someone snorted, and more sparks flashed. Hoping that was a positive, Scott hit the switch. 

Everything happened in seconds. Light flooded the room, blindingly bright after the darkness of before. Scott had just enough time to see Jeff Davis standing on the desk, wings stretched and teeth bared. Mrs. Hale sprawled on the floor in front of him, covered in a pile of purple flowers. The room filled with the reek of burning hair and meat. Then electricity crackled and sparked, and the light bulbs burst in a shower of glass, plunging the room back into darkness. 

Someone howled.

Instinctively Scott wrapped his hand around the dragon's neck and squeezed with his elbow. The little dragon roared, water bursting from its throat. He couldn't see where it hit, but the glowing red eyes vanished, and there was an all-mighty thump of a splash, followed by the crack of wood snapping. 

Something moved, and Scott dived aside just in time to miss Jeff Davis rushing at him. Jagged bits of wood caught his arm and back, scratching deep as he twisted out of the way. A second later he had to leap again when Jeff Davis turned on his hind hooves and lunged, missing where Scott had been by a breath. His horn punched a hole straight through the drywall and wood instead. With a yank, he pulled it out, taking a fist-sized chunk of the wall with him. He turned to Scott and snorted, fishy eyes wide and red, fangs glinting. 

Scott gave the dragon a quick pull again, splashing deeper into the room, planting himself between the desk and the horse. Water splashed around his ankles and soaked his socks, but whatever had made it spark before had died. Jeff Davis twisted to follow him, horn leveled. The second he started to step forward, Scott squeezed. The stream hit square-on, right in Jeff Davis' skull face. 

He snorted and danced backwards, shaking his head to get his face out of the line of fire. Scott kept the pressure on, giving the dragon its head to aim.

A shadow blocked the sunlight coming through the door. "Scott?" Derek demanded, the word slurred with too many teeth. "What—"

"Run!" Scott yelled, but it was too late. Like he had a homing device built in, Jeff Davis' head turned. A second later he charged. Derek didn't have any time to move out of the way before the horse was on him, horn punching through his shoulder. They crashed through the door, Derek rolling out of sight as he went down under the onslaught. Shouts went up, followed by a long howl Scott recognized as a call for help. 

Hoping Derek would be okay, Scott dropped the dragon and turned back toward the desk. It was still mostly dark, but he found Mrs. Hale almost immediately. She was still covered in flowers, endless sprays of them stuffed absolutely everywhere—under her shirt, in her pockets, in her _mouth_. Scott was almost certain it was wolfsbane, and he didn't need to be a botanist to know was a _really bad thing_ to blanket a werewolf in. 

Under it all, her skin was burning hot to the touch, and her breath came in sharp gasps that reminded Scott of his own asthma attacks. She was in full beta form, fangs locked around a gag. Scott untied the knot and yanked it off, but she still wouldn't let go, teeth dug in around the cloth. He had to wedge his thumb between her teeth and pry them open. Her fangs sliced through his skin like it was nothing, but eventually he was able to pry out the gag and start scooping out flowers. They were all over, all the way to the back of her throat and under her tongue, stuffed in her cheeks. The flesh in her mouth felt even hotter, swollen and soft like old meat. It was amazing she hadn't choked to death long before the poison could have hit her. 

Mouth as clear as he could get it without light, Scott hooked his arms around her shoulders and started to drag her out. Mrs. Hale sagged limp in his arms, head lolling backwards as he heaved. She was heavier than he'd expected, like all the mass from her four-legged form was still packed into a much smaller body. Scott still tried, straining until his back and knees ached, and he'd barely moved her any distance at all. His feet slipped over wet papers and he crackled his heel on an upturned file cabinet, and still he barely made any progress. 

Then a flashlight app lit the room like a spotlight, and then Stiles was there, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back. Derek and Liam weren't as gentle, shoving forward to get to their alpha, faces masks of panic in the white-blue light. 

The hole in Derek's shoulder was a giant red splotch with blackened edges, deep enough that Scott could see a flash of pale bone when the light caught it. He knelt to slide his arms under his mom's upper body and flinched away. His eyes flickered bright gold in the dark. "It's in the water, too. Stiles—" 

Before he could finish, they were already crowding in to form a sling under Mrs. Hale's body so the werewolves had to handle as little wet skin as possible. Together the four of them carried her out, step by excruciating step. By the time they got into the sunlight Derek and Liam's hands were red with wolfsbane rash to the wrists, and matching the bubbling burn that covered Mrs. Hale. 

They carried her over to a bench and set her down as gently as they could. Liam darted off around the corner, while Derek started slicing his mother's wet clothes in long strips, getting rid of the things before the poison could do more damage. 

Scott averted his eyes and let himself sag forward onto Stiles' back. Everything ached, from the top of his head to his toes. He couldn't risk sitting down again. If he did, he wouldn't be getting back up. "Where's everyone else?" 

"They're chasing that damned horse," Stiles snapped, close to growling in Scott's ear. "Do I get to say I told you so now? Because _I told you so_. Jeff Davis is a murdering bucket of rainbow colored shit."

"Don't be stupid." Derek finished getting his mother out of the toxic clothing just as Liam came trotting back with a running hose. As soon as they turned it on her, the redness stopped spreading. The water that poured off her glinted bloody pink. "You think a _horse_ could take down my mother? The _alpha_?"

This time Stiles _did_ actually growl. "Then how do you explain _this_? He just happened to be here?"

"Someone's using him—don't rub your face," Derek snapped. "It's poisonous to you too. Give me a second and I'll rinse you both. You can't go in the house like that." 

Stiles froze, hands inches away from his eyes. Slowly he lowered them again, pressing his palms to his thighs. For good measure, Scott reached around to cover them with his own, twisting their fingers together so Stiles couldn't accidentally kill himself. If anyone could do it, it would be Stiles. 

Grumbling, Stiles leaned back into him. "I still think he's a murderer," he muttered, loud enough that Derek gave him a dirty look. 

"Yeah," Scott agreed quietly. "Me too."

* * *

Stiles stood at the end of the driveway and watched the ambulance drive off, trailed closely by Laura's muscle car packed with all four Hales-by-blood and, for reasons he wasn't sure about, a small statue of a kitten. Scott and Allison crowded in close, both of them still damp—Allison from a misfired balloon, and Scott from having poison hosed off him, and then from wrestling the water dragon into a kennel. The remaining wolves huddled together, looking lost and pathetic as their alpha was taken away. 

The police swarmed over Talia's office, taping it off and making noises about confiscating evidence. Somewhere in the mass of uniforms was Stiles' dad. He could hear his voice, but he couldn't see him. There was too much chaos for that. Allison's mom was at the forefront, though, red hair and killer heels impossible to miss as she put the fear of death into the various forensics people. She snapped orders like a drill sergeant, and even long-time deputies that Stiles _knew_ didn't take shit from anyone hopped-to. 

When the vehicles were finally out of sight and what Stiles assumed was auditory range, the wolves sagged. 

"What do we do now?" Mason asked, the lone human in the pack. He had Liam glued to his back, too close to be for anything other than comfort. "We can't just go home." 

A moment of silence stretched before Boyd nodded. "Right," he said, turning a steely eye on them. "We keep up with our work, and make up for the rest as best we can. We know the rotations and schedules, and we can exercise them, even if we can't train them. We'll stick with it." 

"Derek was supposed to watch the shack tonight," Isaac mentioned, way too casually for a werewolf with a yellow and blue face. Someone had gotten him in the chest with a water balloon, and it had painted him in rainbows all the way down his front. "Glossbox is due. You know how picky she is about werewolves."

"Can we do it?" Stiles asked, before his brain caught up with him, waving warning flags. "I mean, it's just watching to make sure things don't go bad and calling for help, right?" 

Boyd frowned and glanced over at Erica, who shrugged. "That's basically it, yeah," she agreed. The corner of her mouth lifted in a half-hearted smirk. "Are you sure you're up to it? It's pretty gross."

Scott stood up a little straighter against Stiles' side. "I've helped Dr. Deaton with birthing kittens."

"And my family hunts," Allison added pointedly. "We'll be fine." 

Erica bristled, but settled when Boyd put a hand on her shoulder. "Thank you," he said, claws digging into Erica's shoulder pointedly. Her nose wrinkled, one fang flashing over the edge of her lip. She didn't argue though, which might have been a first in her lycanthropic life.

As one they turned back up the drive, trudging toward the house. Stiles dragged his feet in the dirt as he walked. There were still damp spots from the water war Mrs. Hale had been organizing, and they'd barely gotten to use the dye bombs. It had been one of those stupid, fun things people did in summer when things were slow and they had permission to wreck stuff. Now it just felt sad. Even the plants were drooping, like they could tell that something was wrong. 

Liam hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "We should order dinner. Or something," he said slowly, like he wasn't sure he should even be saying it. "Since the Alpha can't..." 

_Can't make dinner._

One of the rainbows that perpetually hung over a corner pond stopped jingling, cloud going from puffy white to looming gray. Every werewolf froze mid-step. Isaac was growling under his breath, and Mason looked ill. Liam hunched down even more.

"He's right." Stiles put his hand between Liam's shoulder blades, where he'd noticed the wolves did sometimes. He wasn't even close to being pack, but he could see a mistake when someone fell face-first into it. Mostly because it was usually him doing it. "Chores and food. Then we'll need to call our parents to let them know we're staying here tonight.

"Mrs. Hale wouldn't want anyone to go hungry just because we're worried about her," Allison added softly, looking between the wolves. "She'd want her pack to take care of itself while she's away." 

That seemed to get things going. The storm clouds lightened around the rainbow. Isaac relaxed. Not much, but he looked less interested in tearing Liam's throat out for daring to point out the obvious. 

Boyd grimaced, but nodded. "Good point. I'll order pizza. You guys..." He took a breath, shoulders pulling back. His eyes flickered gold, which was kind of cool when it wasn't completely terrifying. "Everyone uses the buddy system, even the humans. Finish your work, meet at the house after the five o'clock feeding. Split!"

They did, scattering like a scared flock of Christmas Geese, but without the jingle bells or taste for violence. Even Stiles found himself grabbing Liam's arm and dragging him off toward the water run they'd been cleaning when Mrs. Hale had recruited them for ammunition stocking. His second thoughts didn't hit him until they were halfway there, and by then it didn't seem worth the effort to turn around and ask Boyd how he'd managed that. 

What was left in the day ended up being dedicated to cleaning the water run. It was gross, as only something that was basically a bathtub for horses could be. Everyone hated cleaning it, which meant it was put off until there were absolutely no ways to avoid it any longer. And it showed. A thin layer of oil coated the sides, evidence that not even the robot horses were exempt from water training, and there was a mess of feathers and hair and leaves gathered in the corners. 

They went to work without discussing it, Stiles opening the drain valve to get the water out while Liam mixed the cleaning solution they'd have to use on the bottom. It was just dish soap and lemon juice, but the effort he put into thoroughly mixing it was far greater than was actually needed. Liam did most of the heavy work, scrubbing until his knuckles bled, healed, and then bled again. His claws left scratch marks on the buckets, and actually punctured one of them. 

Stiles kept a tactful silence. It wasn't _his_ alpha in the hospital, but he understood. Maybe a little too well. It had been his dad in that ambulance a few too many times. 

If this was what empathy was, it sucked. He wanted a refund. 

By the time they were finished and the run was re-filling with water, the sun was setting behind the collection of purple-and-blue leafed trees on the western border of the property. Some of the plants turned to follow it, and others started closing their blossoms for the night. A colorful shimmer started to spread across the line of rainbow oaks. It was nice. Easy to forget the hell that had been the rest of the day. 

Erica and Allison walked by with a string of winged horses. Surprisingly, Erica's voice was soft and sweet, without even a hint of a growl as she coaxed them through the air like balloons. Liam seemed to relax when Erica came into sight, so Stiles slipped sideways once they were passed him, staying out of the way as long as he possibly could. Erica seemed to have the same problem, twisting as she walked to keep an eye on Liam. It had to have been a pack thing.

When Erica and Allison vanished down the lane, marked only by the horses floating above them, Liam's shoulders sagged. Carefully Stiles shuffled sideways until his hip touched Liam's elbow. "You okay?"

Liam's mouth twisted into a thoughtful grimace. "I think so," he answered eventually. "I just... I don't like being separated after an attack. The pack should stick together." 

Giving himself a second to wonder if he was about to shove his foot in his mouth and then another second to decide that he didn't care, Stiles asked, "You mean here? Or at the hospital?"

If it _was_ a bad question, Liam didn't seem to care. "Both?" He shrugged, swirling the hose through the water in a spiral. Green sparkles followed it under the surface, a filtration spell being renewed as the water was replaced. "It's not like I'm alone. You're here."

Stiles chewed on that for a while, picking through it in his head. There were way too many questions, and not enough answers, but if anyone was going to have answers, it wasn't going to be Liam. "Come on," he finally said, swinging his legs around to slide down the side of the run to the ground. The hose sprayed everywhere, sparks of magic dispersing rapidly as the grass swallowed them up. "It's full enough. Let's go see if Boyd's ordered pizza." 

As it turned out, he had. It was on the kitchen table in a stack six pies high, which would have seemed excessive before Stiles had started spending time with werewolves. He'd also cleaned the kitchen of all the leftover balloons and paint, and possibly the last ten years worth of grime. It sparkled like unicorn poop. Not a single smudge marred the chrome, the tile grout was whiter than Stiles had ever seen outside a commercial, and the magnets on the fridge had all been alphabetized.

Coping took many forms. Stiles wasn't going to judge. Except he was totally going to judge, because what sort of wolf alphabetized the damned magnets? No wolf. That was who. 

Hovering awkwardly in the doorway, Stiles took in the scene. The cleaning wolf himself sat at the kitchen table, nibbling a slice of pepperoni. Mason sat beside him, picking at a stray piece of cheese. Liam dropped down beside Mason and grabbed an olive. Not a bite, just an olive. A small olive. None of them looked like they were planning on eating more than that any time soon. In fact, they looked more like men who knew they had no choice but to pretend to make an effort. 

The others were nowhere in sight, but if Erica and Allison were putting the pegasii away feeding must have been done. They wouldn't be very far away, and after they arrived they too would probably sit and not eat. Stiles could see it happening, and it didn't promise anything good. It might have been unfair to assume, but he was almost positive that a hungry, sad, anxious werewolf pack would be a bad thing to be around for very long. 

Which meant it had to be humans to the rescue. 

"All right, pizza!" Making as loud a whoop as he dared, Stiles pounced. He jostled his way between Mason and Boyd and started riffling loudly through the pizza boxes. For the most part it was all meat all the time, which really didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was the two all-veggie concoctions, one with alfredo sauce and the other with some sort of marinara that was chunkier than he was used to. He grabbed one in each hand and then flipped around, hopping up on the edge of the table and planting one foot on Mason and Boyd's chairs. 

As planned, he had their full attentions. Their full, glaring, holy-shit-those-are-fangs attentions. Grinning and praying that he didn't smell like something small, helpless and delicious, Stiles put on his perkiest voice and asked, "Are you going to eat that?" 

Boyd's lip curled and he immediately lifted his slice to take a large bite. Liam scrambled to grab the nearest box and yank it close. Werewolf territorial displays: one. Kindergarten lessons on sharing: nil. 

As the other human in the room, Mason was less fooled. His eyebrows went up, but he just nodded and pulled his plate closer to his chest, apparently deciding to play along. "No way, I'm starving. You've got your own." 

Stiles shrugged and hid a smile by biting into the alfredo slice. "I call dibs on leftovers, then." 

That got him a snort, which, fair. Leftovers and werewolves weren't exactly known to exist together for long. 

Once three members of the pack were eating, the rest followed suit without Stiles having to do anything else. Erica dived right into the pile of boxes as soon as she and Allison stepped into the kitchen, and Isaac claimed a half a pie as his own when he showed up with Scott. 

Collectively the four humans put away a pizza and a half, while the four werewolves took care of the rest. Dinner passed easily, though not without a strange hollow feeling. The Hale kitchen was usually stuffed full of people. With just eight of them it was too empty, too silent. They ended up crowded together at one end of the table, ignoring the massive amounts of elbow space available in favor of stuffing their faces. 

And then the food was gone, and there was nothing left to do but stare at each other. The pack leaned in to each other and glared at the table. Allison played with Stiles' fingers under the table, tapping them one by one and then back again, counting. 

On his other side, Scott fidgeted. "I called my mom," he said, breaking the tension with a rush of words. "She said she'll check on Mrs. Hale when she goes in for her shift, and let the others know we're taking care of things." 

Just like that, a too-long held breath was released. 

"Thanks." Isaac had a tiny, barely-there smile. "That's really— thanks." 

"And I talked to our parents," Allison added, bumping his shoulder. "Your dad said he'll drop off some clean clothes in the morning. Try to get some sleep if you can, and don't drive home tired." 

Stiles bumped her back. "Sounds like him. So we're doing this thing?" 

"We're doing this thing." 

A wooden chair skittered across the floor as Erica knocked it back and surged to her feet. "Great. Let me show you the Love Shack." 

Scott's eyebrows went up, and Stiles stifled a snicker. "Alright. To the... _Love Shack_. Did you seriously name it that? _Why_?" 

Erica's expression darkened. "You'll see."

They saw. 

The backyard barn, or Love Shack, was easily the most gaudy, horrible, pink thing Stiles had ever seen. There were hearts everywhere. _Everywhere_. The second-floor window to the hayloft was a heart. The roof shingles were hearts. There was a heart-shaped welcome mat. And every single inch of it was a shade of pink, ranging from so pale it was nearly white to the kind of color that really should have come with a radioactive warning sticker. He couldn't swear, but he was pretty sure that there was glitter involved somewhere. Over the door was a—yes, bright pink—digital clock, blinking away the seconds. 

" _This_ is your breeding barn?" Scott sounded doubtful. "It's really..."

"Pink," Allison finished weakly. 

Stiles tilted his head and held up a hand to block out the worst of the glare to try and read the digital dial over the door. "Six hours and... twenty seven minutes? What does that mean?" 

"It's the whole point of the Love Shack. It's bespelled to tell us exactly when the foal is coming. Only works on our own horses, though, and doesn't tell us when labor starts or how clean it'll be." Erica shoved past them and to the heart-shaped door, with its heart-shaped padlock and heart-shaped window. The door slid open with a reassuringly normal sound. No floating hearts, or violin music, or scattered rose petals. Just well-oiled runners and a wash of sugary-sweet floral air. 

There was a pause of hesitation while they all looked at each other, no one wanting to brave the pink monstrosity first. Allison heaved an annoyed sigh and slipped in past Erica into the barn. Stiles glanced at Scott, then at Erica, who looked way too smug for someone holding the door to a gingerbread cottage that St. Valentine had thrown up on, then back to Scott. They shrugged at each other and grabbed hands, following in Allison's wake. 

Inside looked relatively normal—normal lighting, normal floorboards, a normal stall door. If there seemed to be an edge of pink to the wood, Stiles was charitable enough to assume that his brain had just been broken by all the pink on the outside. The mare in the box stall was a big black pegasus, with a pile of bright red curls and red appaloosa splotches on her very pregnant sides. She stretched out her neck to sniff Allison's shoulder, huffing contentedly when Allison scratched her cheek. 

Then her ears went back, and she bared her teeth toward the door, where Erica had dared to step inside.

"This is Glossbox," Erica said, plastering herself against the far wall, shoulders hunched and eyes lowered. "She's due with a double-winger. Usually she's really nice, but ever since she was bred she doesn't really like werewolves. It happens sometimes. We're predators, and they don't ever forget that completely."

Stiles rubbed the mare's neck, and watched as her ears flicked up, werewolf threat momentarily forgotten. She nuzzled his palm, lipping at it for treats. "Except Derek. Right? You said he was going to be here with her tonight." Which made better sense, now that he knew Derek a little better. He was exactly the kind of person animals and children would love. Even taking into account the fearsome creature of the night thing.

"All of the horses like Derek. Except for Jeff Davis. He doesn't like anyone except Peter." Erica shrugged, making fascinating things happen to her breasts. By the amused look she shot at Stiles, she noticed him noticing. _Werewolves_. "All you have to do is keep an eye on her, and call for help if things look like they're going wrong. Glossbox is an old pro at this. She knows what to do. Anything goes wrong, call Deaton. Have any questions, call Deaton."

"Stub a toe, call Deaton?" Scott guessed. 

Erica flashed a fanged smile. "If it makes you feel better. See you in the morning." With a nod, she vanished back out the door. It slid shut with a musical _click_ and a pink flare of magic. 

Locked in. Great. 

Looking around, Stiles spotted exactly one chair, bales of hay arranged as a makeshift table, and absolutely nothing else even remotely interesting. He scratched Glossbox's cheek, and got his hair chewed on in return. "So, anyone have a deck of cards?"

* * *

Derek didn't have a lot of personal experience with hospitals, and that turned out to be a blessing he hadn't realized he had until it was taken away. The waiting room was packed with tired, angry, fearful people. Their reek filled his nose, made it impossible to breathe without remembering where he was. Machines did the same to his ears, every beep and scrape another sound between him and the unsteady beat of his mother's heart somewhere in the building. 

Laura and Cora took a pair of chairs next to each other, leaning in close for comfort. For his part, Derek preferred the wall near the exit, where he could prop himself up and see everyone coming and going, could smell if anyone had been near his mother. The red, itching wolfsbane rash covering his hands and feet didn't do anything for his good mood. It wasn't bad enough to need treatment, but it left him fidgeting and snarling. Every tiny measure of healing was a red hot needle pricking in his skin as his werewolf side forcibly ejected the poison before it could sink in. He tried to keep from scratching by watching people come and go, sniffed every one of them from afar for traces of his mother. There never was, so it wasn't even a very good distraction, but he tried. 

Hours came and went. Cora made a trip to the cafeteria for snacks, which helped. Not much, but a bland cup of lukewarm stew was better than going hungry. Mrs. McCall stopped in to check on them shortly after that, and to promise that Boyd had the horses in hand. Some of the tension left Laura's shoulders at that, and Derek relaxed a little too. Derek wouldn't trust most of the pups with brushing their own fangs, but Boyd would take care of things. Or at least he wouldn't let the horses go hungry, which was enough. 

Then there was only more waiting. Cora and Peter started a game of Eye-Spy, which lasted three rounds before Peter picked "bleeding ulcer" for something red. Laura had to order him to shut up before Cora gutted him. 

It was nearly midnight before a woman dressed head to toe in bright green scrubs stepped into the waiting room. The scrubs covered her hair, wrapped tightly around her chin and hung loose around her hips, the symbol for Magical Hazards pinned on the breast. She pushed her goggles up to the top of her head and called, "Family for Talia Hale?"

Instantly the four of them were on their feet, jostling against each other to get close. It was Laura who pushed to the front of the pack, snapping Peter back with a flash of teeth. "Yes?" 

The doctor held out a hand to shake. Laura eyed the hand before reluctantly taking it. "I'm Dr. Roen, head of the Magical Hazards department here. I'm happy to report that your mother looks like she's out of the proverbial woods. We have her decontaminated and she's responding well to the antidote. Her injuries are healing slower than usual, but that was anticipated. We expect her to make a full recovery." 

A tight knot in Derek's chest loosened. He let out a long, slow breath and leaned into the nearest shoulder, which happened to be Cora's. She leaned back, for once sibling sniping put aside for pack cohesion. Across from him Peter sagged forward, cupping his face in his hands. The scent of relief was thick in the air, fresh and suffocating and maybe the best thing he'd smelled in a week. 

Laura scrubbed her cheeks and let out a long, quiet whine. "That's... that's good." Her hair was a mess of braids where she'd been playing with it to pass the time. When she tried to run her fingers through it to get it out of the way, her nails caught and tugged until she had to give up. "When can we take her home?" 

"Not for a while yet," Roen explained with an apologetic grimace when they all made protesting noises. Flower petal irises marking her as something other than wyr glinted in the flickering fluorescent light. "I know you're eager to get her home, but I've never seen a case of wolfsbane poisoning this severe. Between that and the slow healing factor on her wounds, I'm going to have to insist she stay with us for at least twenty four hours. You should go home and sleep. Come back in the morning."

A fresh tension prickle Derek's skin. In the corner of Derek's eye, he saw Cora spread her stance and cross her arms. Peter's jaw tightened belligerently. Laura's lips thinned. 

As if she could tell they were about to argue, Roen's smile dropped off. Her shoulders and chin came up, a hint of herbivore-flat teeth peeking through her lips. "You alpha is asleep, and it won't do her any good to wake up and find you all passed out on the floor around her bed," she said sternly. 

The prickle of argument in Laura's expression faded. She nodded. "Of course, I— Derek?"

Derek wilted. The weight of the late hour and too much worry pressed down on him. He hated to admit that the doctor was right, but... "I'll take Cora and Peter home." He rubbed his face to block out the glares he knew he was getting. "Laura should be the one to stay. She's mom's second."

"Excuse you, Talia is beloved my sister—" Peter started to object, and was cut off by a sharp growl from Cora.

"If I have to go, so do you. Come on." Grabbing Peter's arm, she dragged him past a collection of shocked wyr and toward the exit. He made one futile attempt at freeing himself until Cora almost snapped his finger off. After that, he just shrugged and waved sadly as she pulled him through the doors and out of sight. 

Silence reigned in the waiting room until Laura broke it with a cough. "Well, that's one way to do it. Here." She shoved the Camaro key into his hand, and rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "Scratch her and I'll bury you under Jeff Davis' shed," she promised, voice dripping honey.

"Call when Mom wakes up or I'll drive her off a cliff," he answered in the same tone, and got a toothy grin in response. He left while the leaving was still good, ducking down the hospital halls and out into the parking lot. 

Cora had Peter pinned against the passenger side of the Camaro, eyes glowing yellow in the dark, growling loudly enough that a wyr could have heard it on the other side of the lot.

"I'm just saying that I think one of us should stay with Laura," Peter explained. In anyone else, he would have sounded reasonable, submissive. Coming from Peter, Derek had learned to recognize his particular brand of manipulation. It had taken years, but he'd learned. "We don't know what's behind this. It could be dangerous." 

Cloth ripped as Cora flexed her claws in Peter's shirt. "And _I'm_ just saying that Laura is in charge until Mom's better. If she says we go home, we go home."

Sighing, Derek pressed the button to unlock the doors. "And _I'm just saying that if you two don't get your butts in the car, I'll leave you in the parking lot for the murderer to find." He cut around the hood to slide in on the driver's side. By the time he'd reached down to adjust the seat, Peter was already piling in to the passenger side while Cora wiggled into the cramped back._

None of them spoke on the way home. In a way Derek was sad for that, while simultaneously being grateful. He was too tired to filter himself. All he could think of was the sight of his mother covered in poison on her office floor. Nothing good could come from talking about that. 

The doctor told them to sleep. Derek didn't think he was ever going to be able to do that again. 

The house was dark when they pulled up. That wasn't surprising. Everyone except Isaac had other homes to go back to. What was surprising was the two cars still parked in the otherwise empty private lot: Stiles' Jeep and Allison's Mazda, both exactly where they'd been that morning.

"Oh look," Peter drawled, leaning forward to cross his arms on the dash. "More victims." 

"Shut up, Peter," Derek and Cora chorused. Cora kicked the back of his seat for good measure, cracking his nose into the console.

Their uncle curled his lip and popped open the passenger door. "What? It's what we were all thinking. Derek, be a dear and go find the corpses, will you? I need my beauty rest. Laura's orders, after all." He slammed the door before Cora could try to get out on his side, strolling up the drive toward the dark house. 

Derek rolled his eyes and slid out, popping the seat forward. "Get to bed, I'll track down the others." 

His sister slithered and wiggled her way free with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of snarling, popping loose of the tangle of seat belts and yanking her shirt down. Her hair was a tangled wreck, and she smelled heavily of exhaustion. That didn't stop her from drawing herself up and glaring at Derek. "Are you sure?" she demanded, mouth tight with worry. "I don't want to say Peter's right, but..."

"I'll be fine," Derek promised. "I'll just do a quick search, check up on the horses. If anything gets too strange, I'll call for help. Okay?" 

Cora's face was lemon-sour, and her scent was just as bad. She turned up the path toward the house anyway, shoulders up and back straight. He was going to wake up to pink hair, or maybe something worse. Derek could taste it. 

He made quick work of the search, dropping to all fours to dash between buildings. Smell wouldn't help; their scent was all over the property now, and he had no idea where to start for a fresh trail. That left footwork. The police had put wards up around his mother's office—not just the usual crime scene tape, but actual No Tamper spells. They were so solid that Derek could still make out the scent of paint and dead leaves that had clung to Scott's hands after his work on the roof, and the hoof prints leading out of the barn were completely intact. 

A quick jog through the main barn showed no signs of the wyr, or of anything other than normal business. The horses were quiet, mostly asleep. The barn cat prowled for mice, entirely undisturbed by a possible murderer lurking in their midst. A few times he thought he smelled Jeff Davis nearby, but the damned horse had been all over. His scent was embedded in everything, and would be for months yet before it finally faded. 

The training barn went fast, Jeff Davis' stall faster yet—it still needed to be rebuilt and reinforced, and there was no way Derek was going to do a complete search of it alone and in the dark. He settled for pressing his ear to the wooden door, listening. When there weren't any heartbeats, and the only blood he could smell was both old and his, he moved on. 

It was behind the breeding barn that he figured it out. The Shack was back there, glowing gently pink with a flurry of hearts floating over it. The timer on the door flashed all zeroes. When he focused he could just make out the soft beat of four extra hearts.

Carefully Derek slipped up to the Shack, taking a full walk around it for any sniff of trouble before pushing the door open. It rolled with a tiny squeak of sound. The hearts overhead popped, raining down pink sparkles as the magic finished running its course. 

Inside a game of Go Fish was laid out on the hay bales, along with three cell phones, two bottles of water and a grease-stained plate. The shack reeked of sugar roses—possibly the worst side effect of its magical existence possible, in Derek's opinion—which mixed badly with the stench of afterbirth, sweat and horse. Under that, there was no chance of a wyr scent making its way through the fog. 

When Derek peeked over the wall, Glossbox snorted, pawing at the straw anxiously. She'd braced herself in the far corner and was eying the triple-sized tangle of limbs that could only be Derek's quarry. Her ears flicked back and forth, clearly not sure whether she approved of the wyr intrusion. The obvious reason for her unease was asleep at her feet—a bright blue foal with stars scattered across its flanks and a pair each of spectral and kelpie wings. 

He shushed her sternly and eased the stall door open, edging in as unobtrusively as he could. "Easy, girl," Derek murmured, dropping down low to check the foal—a colt. Glossbox sniffed his head thoughtfully, lipping at his hair and calming a little since he was there.

Horses seen to, Derek moved on to the wyr. They were huddled in a corner, Stiles' paint-smeared fingers were wrapped around Allison's leg while his own acted as a pillow, and Scott's face smashed into Allison's stomach. A surge of unexpected affection warmed Derek's heart. He hated the thought of waking them, but it couldn't possibly have been comfortable. Wyr got cricks and sore muscles from sleeping in odd ways. Funny as it would have been to see them limping around, Derek wasn't cruel. Mostly. Grabbing the closest shoulder he could find, he gave it a hard shake. 

Allison snorted and rolled over, blinking sleep-crusted eyes at him. Hay clung to her hair, had left imprints in her cheek, next to a crease that looked like it came from Stiles' jeans. "Derek?" she mumbled, rubbing at her forehead. "What're you doing back? Your mom...?" 

"She's doing better, and I was looking for you. Come on." He shuffled aside, putting himself between them and Gloss. Allison crawled forward, then started to weave back down into the straw, eyes sliding shut again. Derek bumped her shoulder until she startled back upright and resumed moving. Scott was the next in line, sprawled atop Stiles like a human-shaped blanket. He got up without ever opening his eyes, rising at a touch and mumbling blind agreement when Derek pushed him after Allison. 

Stiles was another story. When Derek jostled him he snorted awake, blinked, and then immediately rolled over and went back to sleep. A second try got the same result with a slightly different angle of Stiles' back. Only quick reflexes kept him from being kicked in the face on the third time, catching Stiles' foot inches from his jaw. 

After that Derek was tempted to leave Stiles there, but there was too big of a chance that Gloss might step on him. Even if the liability waivers would cover it—they would—Derek didn't want to see Stiles die. Burn his hand stealing bacon, maybe, but not dead. 

"This is for your own good," he told the sleeping boy before hauling him upright. While Stiles was still in the process of realizing something was wrong, Derek slapped a hand over his mouth and pinned his arms to his sides to drag him squirming and yelling out of the corner. Stiles kicked uselessly at the straw, tried to bite and twist. He was no match for a werewolf, weighing basically nothing and with only slightly less upper body strength than a puppy. Derek pulled him through the stall door that Allison helpfully held open and dropped him in the middle of the floor. 

He collapsed in a sprawled heap, glaring viciously ceiling-ward with a hissed, "I hate you all."

"We know you do, dude, we know," Scott muttered, dropping down against the stall door. His eyes were still barely open, and his breathing sounded off, but he smiled at Derek like there wasn't straw dust in his eyelashes. "How's your mom?" 

"Recovering." Derek leaned back against the stall door, only to find Allison already sitting there. She flashed him a sleepy smile and shuffled sideways, legs stretched out on the concrete floor. "The doctors told us to go home, but I saw your cars. You took care of Gloss?" 

Stiles frowned and sat up with a dramatic groan. He teetered back and forth until Scott grabbed his waist and yanked him over, at which point he settled for draping over Scott's shoulder. There were still smears of color across his cheek and dotted down his neck where the dye had splashed. It made him look like pixies had attacked him. Or maybe like he'd been pelted with unicorn shit. "You couldn't exactly do it, and Boyd said she only likes you right now. Anyway, not like she needed us."

"It was easy," Allison said softly. Her tights were warm brown, and speckled with bits of straw that had poked through the fabric. She picked at them without looking up. "We just played cards and then boom, there was a baby. We didn't even see it happening."

"That's the way it should be." Since everyone else was sitting, Derek let himself slide down. His knees crackled and popped, and his back ached from too long sitting in the plastic monstrosities that the hospital pretended were chairs. "I completely forgot she was due. If something had gone wrong..."

"But nothing went wrong." One of Scott's legs stretched out to tap his ankle with his sneaker. There was still horse shit on the sole, bits of it wobbling as it tried to break off and float away. Instead it just stuck to Derek's ankle. 

He tried to take the gesture as intended. "Well, thanks anyway. I appreciate it." Derek gave it a beat, waited until they'd started to smile, and added, "Not that this gets you out of anything. You're still on the hook for the summer."

All three of them groaned loudly. Music to a werewolf's battered ears. He grinned and pulled his legs under him. If he had to grab the wall, that was between him and the wall and no one else. "Come on, Gloss isn't going anywhere, and you three need sleep. We've got spare rooms." 

To his credit, Scott tried to protest. He sat up straight, eyes going wide and comically alert. "We can go home. We're—" Derek flicked him on the forehead, and he collapsed back onto Allison's lap. He tried to get up, but gave up halfway through the rise and just fell backwards, whining pitifully. 

Allison grinned down at Scott, running her fingers through his hair. "Poor baby. Come on, no driving for us." With a pull from Derek and the use of her own impressive set of skills, Allison maneuvered Scott up onto his feet, and even managed to balance him there with only a single hand on his shoulder. He wobbled whenever she removed it for a second, but he propped himself up on the stall door and that seemed to help. 

At least until Glossbox tried to bite him over it. 

Scott yelped and jumped away, barely missing getting his shoulder nipped. He rubbed at it and frowned over at Gloss, who had her ears pinned back and was clearly hoping for another shot. "What did I do?"

Derek frowned at Gloss; she was usually even tempered. "It must be the new baby. Sometimes they get protective like that." Curling an arm around Scott and Allison's shoulders, he gave them a gentle push before turning to drag Stiles to his feet. "Let's go. You can come back with a basket of treats in the morning." 

Keeping all three of them in front of him for the sake of their dismal human eyesight, Derek propelled them through the door and out into the night air. The shack slid shut behind them, spells settling into place to keep both Gloss and her foal safe until he could move them in the morning.

True to expectations, as soon as they left the lit area of the shack all three wyr started to veer slightly off course in three different ways. Derek felt like a herd dog, chivying them with little nudges and shoves, the occasional hand on the shoulder. He still didn't know how wyr had survived as a species when they couldn't even see in half-light, or tell a house cat from a mountain lion by scent. He'd tried to write a paper on it once, titled Why Isn't Humanity Dead Yet?, but his professors had said it was 'too honest', whatever that meant. 

The night was quiet. Peaceful. Or it should have been. Something crawled up Derek's spine, making him want to spook at every crackle of branches and breath of wind. About halfway there the wyr started walking in a straight line, so Derek assume they could finally see the house. No one had left a light on, because Peter and Cora were both assholes. Luckily, the starlight was bright enough to light up the porch. That was all Derek needed. He aimed his charges that direction and hoped they didn't break something on the way.

They were almost to the porch when a loud crack echoed through the night. Having experience with two sisters kept Derek from flinching. The three single children he was herding weren't so steady. They leaped ahead two paces, plowing into each other at the bottom of the porch steps and almost eating dirt before they found their feet again. Their heartbeats ratcheted up, triple time as they craned their necks back toward the path. Allison's hands went for her belt, where there weren't supposed to be any weapons, and Stiles skittered sideways like a nervous colt. 

"What was that?" Scott demanded, voice rising. If Derek had been able to smell anything over sugar roses, he bet they would have smelled terrified. 

"A pine cone falling." If he said it with enough conviction, Derek might even believe it. "Get inside. You'll be safe from the big bad pine cones in there." He gave them a push toward the house, and only snickered a little when they tripped going up the stairs to the back porch. 

Because he was a literal monster rather than a figurative one, Derek flipped on the kitchen light as soon as he could reach it. "You know where the bathrooms are. Go wash. I'll get you something to wear to bed."

They huddled together, looking like something Jeff Davis had dug out of the ground and tried to run over. Their scents were still completely overwhelmed by the spells from the Love Shack, but he thought they looked nervous. A series of uncertain looks passed between them before Scott stepped forward, apparently the unanimously chosen speaker. "Thank you. We know how werewolves are about their dens, and..." Scott glanced over at Allison, who was nodding encouragement, and Stiles, who looked grimly determined and not a little sleepy. "We really appreciate it." 

Derek stared at him for a second, then heaved a sigh and leaned back against the nearest counter. "You saved my mother's life today," he said quietly, but firmly. "It's not my decision, but as far as I'm concerned that makes you pack. Pack stays in the den." 

They gaped. It was a good feeling. He flashed them a small smile and turned. "I'll go get those clothes."

And he absolutely wouldn't investigate any falling pine cones after. It was late. Derek needed sleep. It could wait until morning. 

Really.

* * *

Tree limbs wobbled under his hooves, and the weight on his back dragged him down, made it hard to float properly. It had been a long time since he'd been so unsteady on his feet. But it had to be done. The future of true love depended on it!

But... Jeff Davis remembered.

_The colt curled up, absorbing the world for the very first time. The straw under him, a cool breeze running over his damp coat. His mother nudged him with her muzzle, like she wasn't quite sure what he was or what to do with him but knew she had to do something. He blinked at the world, vision fuzzy. Things—people—crowded around him, cooing and rubbing his coat dry. One of them stuck something in his nose, wiping it out. He snorted and yanked away, but only ended up wobbling and falling over._

_Being born was hard._

_"He's going to be okay, right Dr. Deaton?" a boy asked, voice cracking with worry. He smelled like predator. Like death. Like body spray._

_"It looks like they both made it through, but I'll be happier when he's eating." The man's voice was low and smooth. Gentle. His hands ran over the colt's head soothingly._

_Another voice muttered, "Ugly thing, isn't he?" It was an aristocratic voice, sharp and cruel. He held a collection of Macy's kitchenware against his chest, and was clearly smug at the money he'd saved on the high quality goods. The colt loved it, and him, immediately._

_"Don't be mean, Uncle Peter," the boy crooned. Small hands patted his shoulder. "Get up, boy, you can do it. I think he's going to be an alicorn. He has the headknob." He urged the up with nudges and soft words, matching what the colt's mother was doing from the other side._

_He put up with it for a few minutes, but eventually it started to bother him. Rocking sideways, the colt stretched out spindly newborn legs and lurched to his feet. Locking his knees to brace himself upright, he looked around, taking the world for a minute._

_The doctor, Deaton, was still rubbing him down, warm fingers massaging new muscles as they stretched for the first time. The colt immediately disregarded it as belonging to someone to ignore. In the corner, the love of the colt's new life stood sullenly, thin face twisted into a scowl. Hearts sparkled around his face, coloring him with a lovely glow of promise and hope and mayhem. Peter was a young man, maybe thirty five, obviously younger than the boy for no apparent reason._

_In contrast, young boy was tall and muscular, with a silvering shadow of a beard. Jeff was too new to the world to know, but obviously he was only in high school, or maybe younger. Fifteen at the oldest. Over his chest was a lovingly painted target, glowing with promise._

_It called him, silently beckoning, and looking at it, he knew: one day, he was going to stab that. He gave it a headbump, but his horn wasn't in yet and the boy just laughed rather than bled. One day, though, one day..._

_"Have you decided on a name, Derek?" the doctor the colt had decided to ignore asked. "You've got a few days before the papers need to be submitted."_

_"No way, I already know," the boy said, running his hand down the colt's neck. "His name's Jeff Davis."_

* * *

The showers at the Hale place were the best showers Allison had ever seen, and she'd been in some very ritzy hotels when she was doing the Archery State Champion circuit. The water pressure could have cleaned a the Aegean Stables, and there was enough space to fit five people comfortably. Which they didn't, because no matter what Derek said about them being pack, shower sex in someone else's home would definitely be on the weird side. 

That didn't mean she didn't mark it off for later adventures. Just in case. 

True to his word, Derek left a pair of shorts and a t-shirt by the door, along with a note telling her which rooms they could use. He didn't sign it, but she could recognize his handwriting by the swoop on the A. No one else had penmanship that delicate. No one, not even ten year olds trying to impress Miss Daisy with their best handwriting and a glitter pen. 

According to the note, she was sleeping in the "the second to last bedroom on the left, third floor where all the guest rooms are". Allison hadn't even really considered what the third floor was, but that explained it. A pack must have needed a lot of spare rooms, and the Hales had the money for it. 

Hair dripping a wet spot through the towel down the nape of her neck—because there was no way she was going to try and use a blow dryer that late at night—Allison bundled up her dirty clothing and started out. She half expected to find Derek lurking, but the hallways were filled only with silence. More than usual, with an itch of loneliness that she would have written off as psychosomatic anywhere but a werewolf's den. Whether it was the late hour, or the alpha being absent, she couldn't say. Just that it was a relief when she reached the mysterious third floor and found Stiles standing in the hall. He stared at the open doors to the three bedrooms Derek's note had mentioned, frowning deeply. 

Like her, he was wearing just a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt. Unlike her, he hadn't bothered to dry off. Everything stuck to him everywhere. It was a good look for him, even the dots of color from the balloons. Showering hadn't done anything for them at all. He still had the whole set, from the smudge of blue on his forehead to the purple on his fingertips and a constellation of splatters ran down his neck and vanished under his collar. 

Allison let herself take a step back to admire the miles of pale, mole-dotted skin and half-transparent t-shirt. Unfortunately, he noticed, and turned his frown on her.

"Do you see this?" he demanded, waving one hand like whatever "this" was should be self-evident. 

"I do. It's a door. Three of them. Convenient, isn't it?" She brushed past him to peek into "her" room. It wasn't anything special—just the usual furniture and a nice, plain blue paint on the walls. Someone, she suspected Derek, had turned the bedside light on and folded down the blankets. 

There _was_ one thing that was unusual. A second door in the walls that had been propped pointedly open. On the other side was a second bedroom, painted in dark yellows. She frowned at it and stepped in enough to see that, yes, it also had another open door that led into a green room. Color-coded for their convenience, apparently.

"Is this..."

"Derek's way of telling us it's okay to fuck?" Stiles finished for her, stepping in close so he could peer over her shoulder. His body pressed against her back, thin clothing doing nothing to hide how hot he was. Or how damp. "Pretty sure, yeah." 

Allison blinked. "That's... Sweet? Weird, but..."

"Yeah," Stiles grimaced. "It's Derek-sweet. Which is weird."

Scott's face appeared through the doorway in the green room. "So I'm not the only one who's not sure whether we should be weirded out by this or not?" 

She gave it a moment of thought, then dumped her clothes on a chair, shook herself and stepped into the yellow room in the middle. Bending over, she unwound the towel from around her head and looked back at them. "Come here and close the doors." Hopefully there would be decent sound proofing. A werewolf house would almost have to have it, right? 

They piled onto the bed, sitting in a circle as upright as any of them could manage at almost three in the morning. The shower had done a good job of waking Allison up, at least enough for her brain to function for more than basic locomotion, but looking around at her boyfriends she didn't have any words. At least, none that she knew how to start with.

Which was why she had Scott. "So, the... bedroom thing. This is super freaky, but I'm not sure I don't like it." He spread his hands on the blanket between them, fingers splayed wide. "Derek's kind of cool, once you're on his nice side."

"He is, isn't he?" Allison remembered he way he'd smiled in the kitchen, happy and soft. It made her chest ache, wishing he'd look like that more often.

"He loaned us clothes. That's a big deal for a werewolf. Scent-sharing?" Scott shuffled in closer, until his knees bumped theirs. "I'm pretty sure these aren't new clothes. They've got to be covered in werewolf smell."

Startled Allison checked the hem of her shirt, but if it belonged to someone it was in too good of condition for it to show. It didn't _feel_ like a shirt straight from the package, though. Not crisp enough, and there weren't any fold lines. It must have been washed, and that would have left at least some scent residue, even on new clothes.

"Is some weird werewolf mating thing?" Stiles asked, nose wrinkling. He pinched the front of his shirt and pulled it out, away from the skin. "Are we going to wake up to Derek standing naked over us with a basket of flower petals and classical music? Because I've had enough flowers today, thanks. No more death flowers for anyone."

"I don't think Derek would know how to do weird werewolf mating stuff with a manual and a guide-dog," Scott said. He grunted when Allison nudged him with her elbow in rebuke, falling theatrically over sideways and into Stiles' lap to escape her. "What? It's true!"

Allison stuck her tongue out. "Don't be _rude_ , we're his guests." But her fingers rubbed over the hem of her shirt. It was soft and pliable under the calluses she was collecting from so much work on Three Moon. "What if we want him to do weird werewolf mating stuff with us?"

The boys went quiet. She held her breath. It wasn't that they'd never talked about what would happen if someone else came by, they'd just only talked about it while drunk on fairy wine or having sex, which really didn't count. 

"Don't werewolves have that 'mate for life' stuff going on?" Scott asked slowly. He rolled himself upright, but stayed pressed closed to Stiles' side, their arms linked and shoulders bumping. 

"So do humans, if you read the right romance novels. But maybe it's just the pack thing." Stiles twisted his fingers together, weaving them into a knot, then unweaving them and repeating it. "And it's not like they're just going to keep brand new clothes hanging around in case someone needs them, right? Could be an accident."

Reaching out, Allison put her hand over Stiles' fidgeting ones. "So what if it's an accident? That doesn't change the question on our side, does it?" Stiles didn't look up to meet her eyes, so she squeezed his hand until he did. "It's not like I want to trade you two. He's just... I like him. But I love you. If you don't want to, though, I won't push."

One of Scott's hands touched hers, wrapping around to cup Stiles' with her. "I like him, too. He's a good guy. And he's pretty hot," he added as an afterthought. "Like, really hot. You've seen his muscles?"

"I kind of get too busy staring at his ass," Allison snorted. "I think he paints those jeans on."

"No no no, it's the whole package," Stiles grinned, getting into the spirit. He pulled his hands away to sketch an upside down triangle, shoulders to thighs on an imaginary Derek. " _Woof_." 

"Stiles," Allison gasped, scandalized. She shoved at his shoulder, and got a shove back in turn. 

The next thing she knew, both of her boys were shoving her down, laughing as they tried to pin her to the bed. She choked back a shriek, kicking her legs and falling back heavily so they landed on either side of her. Twisting between them, she squirmed downward and free over the edge of the bed. By the time they'd realized they'd lost her, she'd already thrown herself down to straddle them both by their hips and a hand on each chest. 

"Ha!" Before they could react—or object—she popped her victory kisses down on their cheeks. "I win." 

"You cheat," Scott grumbled, going obediently limp under her assault of kisses. "You _always_ cheat."

"I don't cheat. You two just don't coordinate your attacks." Allison snuggled into her chosen spot atop their chests, letting her damp hair spread out in clumps that would inevitably leave wet spots behind. There was no way they could stay like that for the whole night. She was too tired, and it was damned uncomfortable to hold for long. While it lasted, though, it was always the best place in the world to be.

The three of them laid there while the digital clock on the bedside table clicked away the minutes until someone—probably Peter, because even his hot cocoa recipe couldn't save Peter from being evil—would wake them up for the early morning chores. After a while, Allison gave up and slid off, letting Scott have the spot in the middle. The sheets were cool where she touched down, but Scott was a giant spot of warmth against her front, which made up for it. 

"I still don't think it's a werewolf mating thing," Stiles grumbled into Scott's shoulder. He punctuated it with a giant yawn. "I think Derek's just weird. Maybe he's not even interested in all of us."

"Then we'll just watch and wait," Scott mumbled back, not even opening his eyes. "All for one and one for all." 

Allison didn't think that phrase was supposed to be a sex thing. Before she could really work it through her head why it wasn't Scott scooted closer and one of Stiles' hands settled on her hip. It was just enough distraction for her tired mind to lose the conversation. She couldn't keep her eyes entirely open. "Sleep now," she decided, squirming down so her legs tangled with Scott's and her feet with Stiles'. "Sex talk later."

There were quiet mutters of agreement that melted into contented silence. The bed shifted, and the light clicked off. [Sighing, Allison ducked her head and let herself drift](http://yue-ix.parakaproductions.com/teenwolf/2015/allisonscottstiles_bedcol.jpg).


	3. The Sudden and Inexplicable Climax

One moment she was dead asleep, and the next a wolf was howling _right in her ear_. 

She shrieked and lashed out, fist connecting with flesh. Someone else's elbow hit her in the chest, and one of the arms around her tightened and yanked, pulling her under someone's body, and someone else pinned her legs. Allison froze, breathing heavily while her thoughts steadied and the panic faded. 

The body over her was Scott's—she could feel him breathing against her neck, stubble scratching her skin like Stiles' never did. That meant the person holding her knees was Stiles. She was safe. There was no wolf. No howling. The house was completely silent, actually. If there'd been a noise, one of the Hales or Isaac would have heard. There was no way a werewolf could have missed it.

"What time is it?" she croaked, throat dry and mouth feeling stiff. 

"About four thirty," Scott answered, lips brushing against her neck. "We were asleep an hour. Are you okay?" 

Taking stock, Allison forced herself to swallow and nod. "Yeah. Just— I dreamed I heard a wolf howl. It woke me up."

The weight moved off her legs, and up toward the head of the bed. Scott's weight vanished, and warm hands pulled her upright. "I heard it, too," Stiles said, voice flat. Her vision had adjusted to the dark just enough to make out his face, the shadow of a scowl visible where starlight caught his jaw and lips. 

"Me too," Scott added. He was harder to see, a hint of curls, a glint where light hit his eye. "No way that was a dream."

Allison leaned back against the headboard, and tried hard to see their faces. The memory of the howl itched under her skin, made her want to move. To _run_. It bubbled up in her veins, fight or flight in every heartbeat. "I want to say we should check it out, but it feels like a trap."

Telltale silence. Then, "If it's a trap, it's not for us," Scott said, firm with conviction. "We're humans. A wolf howls for a wolf." Scott's weight shifted toward the edge of the bed, and Stiles' flailed to grab it.

"Dude, just because the trap's not for us doesn't mean we can't die in it."

"And so can whoever that howl was for." With a twist, Scott yanked free and off the bed. His feet landed with a quiet thump on the carpet. "I'm going to check it out. You can stay here if you want, it's cool." By Scott's tone, it actually would be okay with him if they stayed in the house, safe and secure, while he went and risked death.

It wasn't okay to Allison, though. "I'm coming too." She flipped her legs over, coming so close to kneeing Stiles in the head that she felt his hair against her skin. She fumbled past Scott, headed in the direction of where she thought she'd left her shoes. "It's dangerous to go alone."

"Take this," Stiles added. 

The awkward pause when no one responded dragged out until he sighed and said, "I'll explain later. Let's just go." Another pause, and then a click. Another click. Two more. "Um, I think the lamp's busted. Someone try the wall?"

Frowning, Allison pressed her palm to the wall and followed it to the door frame, then felt around for the light switch. When she flipped it, nothing happened. She tried again, stomach sinking. "I think the power's out."

"The power's out," Stiles repeated flatly from somewhere in the dark. "We're in the first ten minutes of a horror movie, aren't we? Any second now we're going to hear a chainsaw or something and then we're all going to die."

"We're at least halfway through," Scott offered helpfully. "We survived so far. What's the worst that could happen?"

"And we're not going to die _now_ ," Allison couldn't resist adding as she felt around for the pile of clothing that contained her shoes. She found them in a corner and sat on the floor to slip them on sockless. "We have to go hunting for the strange sound we heard in the middle of the night on an isolated farm run by a mysterious family who are actually werewolves."

"I hate you both," Stiles announced grimly. "Let's go be the stupid people in the second act, then. We just have our whole lives ahead of us, after all."

They felt around until they could link hands, which managed to be both horribly stereotypical and comforting. Allison pretended she wasn't grinding the bones in Stiles' hand to a pulp, and in turn he didn't let go. In the hallway there were no windows, no other open doors, no lights at all to show the way. Just one long nightmare corridor ending in a stairwell that had seemed completely harmless until she had to climb down it in the dark. Every step was a new worry that her foot wouldn't hit the ground, that something would leap out and trip them. 

The house was a minefield of furniture and light from the windows that was just enough to make things even more terrifying. Scott led the way, weaving slowly through the den and into the kitchen, where the wide windows and door were at least a visible target. Allison stubbed her toe on a chair leg, which made the most god-awful screech when it scooted over the floor. Stiles almost clawed her hand off at the sound, so tense he was nearly shaking. 

With patience and dedication they made it all the way to the back porch. Outside was almost as bad as inside. The sun wasn't close to rising yet, the moon was long gone, and the lamp posts were dead. The ranch could have been any random clearing in the middle of the night. A faintly paler-than-the-rest strip of dirt marked the main path leading between looming shadows of trees and buildings. It was the only recognizable landmark.

She pressed in against Scott's back, telling herself it was because there wasn't much room to stand and not because she was close to bolting for her car. Tiny noises that were ubiquitous during the day were missing; no horses whinnying, no creaks of saddles or wood. Just the wind and silence. Even the squirrels were quiet, though Allison couldn't be sure if that was a bad sign or just something that happened around werewolves. 

"Which direction did it come from?" Allison whispered. "I don't remember." A flare of guilty hope rose up in her when Stiles shook his head.

It was immediately burst by Scott. 

"The woods. Come on." He started down the stairs, pulling Stiles who pulled her, and there was really no choice but to follow or let him go alone. That wasn't actually a choice at all. 

"Great, just great, so we're going to die in the woods now, fantastic," Stiles grumbled, tripping down the steps to keep close to Scott. "I'm so haunting your ass."

"We'll all haunt each other. There are ghosts that do that," Allison mentioned, keeping her eyes peeled toward the rear, in case anything tried to sneak up on them. Gravel crunched underfoot, only to be replaced by grass a few steps later. It was tall, grasping at her legs with tiny, cold little blades. 

Scott seemed to know where he was going, which made one of them. Allison and Stiles stayed close as he led them through the yard and past the Love Shack, which was pink-tinted even in the dark. Behind it was a copse of rainbow oak that led to the far edge of the Hale property line. 

Roots and leaves tugged at her feet, but the ground was mostly clear. The furled oak leaves glowed in gentle swirls of color. It was too soft to do anything other than keep them from smacking into tree trunks, but there were worse forests to go wandering in without a flashlight. 

All of three feet into the woods, Scott came to a sudden stop, pulling them along with him. Golden light from the leaves directly above him played over his hair, put fresh starlight in his eyes. "Do you hear that?" 

Allison held her breath, straining to hear, but there was nothing. Not even the wind, and there still weren't any wildlife sounds. She shivered. "What? There's nothing there." 

"I hear..." Scott took a step forward, and then another. "Something dripping?" 

"I think I hear it, too." Stiles pushed past, turning toward what Allison thought might be the west side of the property. He took tiny, uncertain steps, then suddenly flinched back and shook his hand free of Allison's to wipe his face, peering up into the rainbow-lit branches. "Molasses? There aren't any sugar trees in... oh my God."

Slimy, sickly butterflies fluttered up in Allison's throat. "Is this the sort of thing where someone says 'don't look up' and then we all do?" She kept her eyes firmly on Scott, who was watching Stiles, who was staring upward with an expression of sick horror.

"And the camera pans back to show what we're looking at and it's terrible?" Stiles finished. He swallowed, the sound too loud in the total silence of the woods. "Yeah, this is that time. Don't look up."

Taking a deep, bracing breath, Allison looked up. 

Woven in among the glowing oak leaves was a massive spider web, crisscrossing between trees and branches. It was big enough that it covered a least four or five trees, thick threads glinting where they caught the light. Right in the middle of the branches was a cocooned bundle, dangling in midair. A woman's face stared out of it, clouded eyes bulging, mouth and nose completely covered by the webbing. 

Bile burned the back of her throat. She swallowed it down. "Oh... okay, that's..." Awful, horrible, terrible. "Another body." Hopefully another body, because if she was alive there was no way they'd be able to get her down in time to save her, and Allison didn't think she could live with that sort of guilt. "But what—"

Something in the trees crackled, and the body in the web swayed. Another shadow blocked the light: a horse with a person-shaped cocoon on its back. 

_Not again_. The thought shot through Allison's head, even as she screamed and dived sideways, dragging her boys with her just as Jeff Davis leaped down from the trees. He landed with a heavy thud and staggered. The body on his back swayed, but was firmly stuck by the webbing. 

Scott was the first on his feet, a blur of motion as he threw himself toward the murderous alicorn. "Don't let him get away!" he yelled, tackling Jeff Davis' neck and wrenching it around to keep him from getting his balance. 

Desperate, Allison felt around in the dark until her hands closed on a rock. Saying a small prayer that she wasn't about to give Scott a concussion, she took aim and threw. Something cracked. Jeff Davis screamed, trying to turn toward her. Scott's weight on his neck made sure all he could do was spin his rear around uselessly. A stick was next. It whirled through the dark to skitter under his hooves and make him jump. 

In the corner of her eye, she saw Stiles creeping around low to the ground, circling Jeff Davis. He'd peeled off his t-shirt and was wrapping it around his hands. 

Hoping Stiles knew what he was doing, Allison circled the other way, hurling a small rock to keep the horse's attention. "Hey! Over here, you big, dumb brute! Come on, come and get me!" 

Jeff Davis bounced, taking Scott off his feet for a second, but it worked. His fishy eyes turned on her, gleaming red with malevolence. He pawed the ground, wings stretching out to trigger pegasus magic, and Scott hurriedly yanked his head down to him to keep all four feet planted. 

Winding up, Allison threw another stick, smacking the horse right in the horn. Jeff Davis screamed and reared, dragging Scott up with him. Stiles darted in from behind, scrambling up to the horse's side to grab the cocooned body with t-shirt protected hands. Allison darted left, grabbing up another rock and catching Jeff Davis in the side. When the horse tried to turn, Allison nailed him in the face with a pine cone. 

Shrieking in rage, Jeff Davis went up again. Stiles and Scott shouted as their feet left the ground, but they didn't stop picking at the strings holding the body in place. Under the barrage the body started sagging, and then slipped completely sideways to dangle by just a few threads. 

Finally it dropped away with a heavy thump. The boys followed, leaping to freedom with the cocoon. Allison kept up her barrage, forcing Jeff Davis back away from them, away from the body and the ranch and everything else he'd been trying to ruin. Three more rocks and a handful of acorns was all it took before the horse turned tail and fled, vanishing into the woods with a drumbeat of hooves. 

"What the fuck was that?" Stiles demanded breathlessly. When Allison turned, he was collapsed next to the second body with Scott. 

"More like, who is that?" Allison staggered over next to them, hitting her knees. Rocks and acorns and roots scratched at her skin, but it barely mattered. She patted around on the sticky cocoon, trying to make sense of the shape. It wasn't spider web in anything other than structure. It might have been treacle, if treacle could do that. "Are they dead?" 

"Here." Scott groped around at the other end, digging his fingers into the gunk. "I can feel hair. Help me—"

They all dug in, ripping away strands of dark, sticky web as fast as they could. Bits and pieces came through, forming a pale blur of a face in the darkness. Nose, mouth, forehead. No movement, no sound. The body didn't even look like it was breathing. 

"Who is it?" Stiles shifted back on his heels to let the faint light from the trees sift down. "I can't see—"

"It's Derek," Scott said, hands cupping the face and tilting it back, feeling for a pulse. Allison's heart plummeted until Scott took a sharp breath and added, "He's alive."

* * *

Scott huddled close to Allison and Stiles at the breakfast table. Cocoa and danishes someone had dug out of the pantry were laid out, but Scott wasn't hungry. He was too tired for that. A nap in a stall and then an hour of sleep wasn't nearly enough rest. It had reached the stage where everything was too loud, too bright, too _much_. Stiles and Allison's presence kept him from climbing the walls, barely. 

Outside deputies were crawling over the ranch, looking for clues and using ladders to get the body out of the trees. Again. They were getting used to being called out; there were still places around the ranch sporting police tape. No one even bothered to call the Sheriff in until Deputy Parrish noticed that Stiles was there. Then they couldn't call his father fast enough. 

On Scott's left, Stiles had slowly started sagging sideways. His head rested against Scott's heavily, pushing them both over at an odd angle that was close to dumping them both on the floor. Scott slipped back in the chair, and Stiles finished his slide until he was draped over Scott's lap. Allison patted Stiles' head tiredly, sipping a cup of Peter's cocoa. They were still in the clothes Derek had loaned them, with added stains and tears. Peter had smirked when he'd seen them, which kind of made Scott wish he'd found something else to wear. Except whatever he found on his own would undoubtedly be even more embarrassing. 

"Do you think—" Scott started, and was cut off by a sharp grunt from down in his lap.

"Shut up." Stiles knocked his elbow into Scott's side. "No thinking. Every time we think, something horrible happens." 

Scott poked Stiles' side hard, just to make him twitch. "I was going to say, do you think anyone's called Laura?"

"I think Peter did. I saw him on the phone." Allison pressed into Scott's side, fingers playing with the handle of her cocoa mug, swirling half-melted whipped cream around. It smelled strongly of too-sweet chocolate and cinnamon, something else sharp and bitter. "Not like there's anything she can do from there. And she won't leave her mom."

The mixed scents churned Scott's stomach, somewhere between nausea and hunger but not quite either. He angled his head so it wasn't so close, but there was nothing he could do to escape it entirely. "I wish there was something we could do," he muttered, slouching forward. Stiles made a little noise of complaint, but couldn't be bothered to move, so he couldn't have been that uncomfortable. 

Another quarter of Allison's whipped cream melted before the Sheriff finally tromped into the kitchen, still wearing a t-shirt with his star pinned to the breast. At first he didn't say anything, just helped himself to a cup of coffee and a danish and sat on the other side of the table. 

Where Mrs. Hale usually sat. 

Scott swallowed down a protest. Mrs. Hale wasn't there. Anyway, it was just a chair. There was no reason for him to feel weirdly defensive over a _chair_.

The Sheriff took a sip of his coffee, sat it down and said, "Derek's going to be okay." Relief shuddered down to lodge a lump in Scott's chest. Allison clutched her cocoa mug tighter, and Stiles' fingers dug into his thigh. "He's being treated for a nasty head wound and near suffocation, but werewolves are tough and there was no wolfsbane involved. I don't think he's even going to go the hospital. A shock blanket should do the trick." 

"What about the other one?" Allison asked, voice rising. "The person in the web?" The Sheriff's face closed up, and Allison's voice trailed off as hope faded away. 

"She didn't make it. I shouldn't..." Stiles' dad visibly hesitated, then shook his head. "Hell, I might as well tell you before you see it on the news. According to her ID, her name was Daphne. Peter says she and her girlfriend used to come by here a lot. It's a pattern now."

Stiles flailed upright, smacking Scott in the chest with his elbow. "A pattern?" he demanded sharply. "You've figured it out?"

"Yeah." The Sheriff grimaced and pinched off a piece of pastry, popping it in his mouth and chewing slowly. They were good, like all of the food in the Hale house was good, but the Sheriff didn't look like he could taste it. "It took a while, but all the victims had ties to Three Moon. Whoever's doing this has one hell of a grudge."

Heart sinking, Scott let his body go with it, sliding down to slump in his chair. "It can't be that bad?"

His answer was a snort and another bite of pastry. "The press is salivating, the Martins have sore throats and Marshall Argent is spitting hellfire missiles." The Sheriff shot an apologetic look across the table. "Sorry, Allison."

"I know how she is," Allison said with a tight smile. "It's okay." 

Another bite of danish. The Sheriff chewed like he couldn't even taste it, quick and to the point. "Now, I know I'm not the parent of two of you, but I think you need to head home. I'll talk to Laura Hale about your contracts. I think she'll understand." 

It took a second for that to sink in through Scott's sleep-deprived brain and reach his _oh no_ center. He surged to his feet in a panic, grabbing the edge of the table. "What? _No_! You can't— we promised we'd help!" Anger bit into his chest, shaking him down to the bone. Red edged in around his vision, staining it with a fine film that sharpened everything into hyperfocus. After everything that had happened, they were going to be sent home like children. "They need us!" 

"And you need to not end up suffocating to death in a treacle spider web." The Sheriff finished his coffee in a long swallow. It thumped down on the table. "Look, Scott, you and Allison can talk to your parents. If they'll let you keep working here that's their business. But Stiles is done."

"Dad, no—"

" _Done_." 

Scott's mouth opened to keep protesting, but all that came out was a growl. Rage burned, deep in his chest, a physical thing clawing its way up through his throat. People moved around him, motion and meat-scent making his teeth itch and his muscles twitch to leap and rend and bite. Wood splintered under his claws as his grip tightened around the table top. 

"Scott? Scott, can you— shit, someone go get one of the Hales, how the hell—"

"I've got this, hold on—"

A metallic squeak, and then something was hurtling at his face. Instinctively he clawed it out of the air. The balloon burst, rainbow dye fountaining in a freezing cold wave. 

The cold worked like a slap to the face. Scott gasped, claws melting away. Grabbed his shoulders and guided him back into a chair. Rainbow water puddled on the floor; Derek's shirt was ruined, unless glitter tie-dye was his thing. Stiles stood across the kitchen next to the open refrigerator door, where a whole pile of water balloons must have been chilling. He had another one in hand, ready to throw in case...

In case Scott lost control again. 

_Crap_.

The Sheriff knelt down in front of him, touching his knees and immediately getting green-purple fingertips for his trouble. "You okay?" He nodded, tucking his chin down and forcing his breathing to slow. It felt easier. Like his lungs weren't fighting him anymore. "Okay, Scott, I need you to tell me when you were bitten? Did you ask for it? It's okay if you did, I just need to know." 

Panic made Scott's heart leap up into his throat. Allison's hands on his shoulders kept him down, rubbing gently, soothing. He tried to focus on that, but there was so _much_ to focus on, noises and sounds. Heartbeats, those were _heartbeats_ , and they were everywhere. Allison's and the Sheriff's, Stiles' further away, more of them outside.

"Scott? Scotty, come on, stay with us." Cold fingers touched his thigh where the borrowed shorts were riding up. He opened his eyes to see Stiles crouched by his dad, worry making him frown. Close together like that, the family resemblance made them look like one of those fun house mirrors, with just enough details changed to mess with the brain. 

Or maybe he was just tired. 

"I— I didn't— I don't think..." His hands curled into fists on his lap. His perfect, unmarred hands. Hands that didn't have any of the bruises or cuts he'd gotten on the roof the day before. There'd been a lot of them: scraped knuckles, the slice across his thump from the sharp edge of the bucket, a bruise that was also from the bucket. Humans didn't heal like that.

But he wasn't human anymore. "When I found Mrs. Hale yesterday, there was wolfsbane in her mouth. I think I cut myself getting it out. I didn't realize..." Scott shook his head. "I didn't mean to." 

"At least you won't have to worry about asthma anymore, right?" Stiles quipped, but Scott could hear the stress in his heartbeat, the way it was still moving too fast. Or maybe that was just Stiles, because his smile was real. "And hey, we're already sort of pack members, according to Derek."

There was another heartbeat coming closer, moving fast. A minute later the cracked open, swinging so hard that the knob dented the reinforced spot on the wall with a metallic _clank_. 

Cora fell inside, clutching the door frame to keep herself upright, dark hair half falling from the bun she'd twisted it into. "I heard a..." She stared at Scott, who stared back. A scent came with her—woods and wild, a hint of fur, and something else that made Scott's skin prickle pleasantly. Red ate at the edge of his vision, and he knew without needing a mirror that his eyes had changed color. " _Fuck_." 

Bones creaking, the Sheriff stood upright. "That just about sums it up." 

"Is my mom going to be in trouble?" Cora edged inside and closed the door. "I know there's laws and stuff, but she didn't bite him! I know she didn't, she would have said—"

Scott held up his hands, pleased to see that he didn't have any claws. Because that was going to be a thing now. Claws. And teeth. And extra body hair, just when he was almost done with puberty the first time. Great. "It's okay, it's not like I'm going to sue or anything."

She snarled and took a step closer. "You'd better not, you little—" 

Stiles' dad slipped in between them, shoulders back and the flat of his palms out, though he wasn't touching. "Don't even start, you two, I don't need another bloody crime scene to deal with today." His voice dropped down a notch, absolutely _oozing_ authority. Scott had to fight the inexplicable urge to roll over and show his belly. 

Allison cleared her throat. "My mom would know for sure, but _if_ it went to court, which it's not going to, it'd probably fall under Good Samaritan laws. Scott knew the risk when he shoved his hand in an alpha werewolf's mouth to save her life. _Didn't you, Scott_?"

"Yeah, I did." Because according to Allison's voice, _I didn't really think about it_ was not the right answer. By the way Cora glared at him, her freaky werewolf lie detector was tattling on him. But it didn't matter anyway, because Scott wasn't going to do something stupid. "It's fine. I'm not really thrilled that I'm going to be a werewolf now, 'cause I kind of liked being human, but I'll deal."

That mollified Cora enough that her eyebrows stopped wising death on Scott and all his loved ones. "We can't do anything until Mom's out of the hospital." She shrugged. "Unless you want Peter to teach you—"

"No!" Scott and Stiles both shouted at once.

"Peter's weird," Scott added, around an unexpected mouthful of too many teeth. The thought of _Peter_ teaching him was... No. Just no. He'd drink his cocoa, but he wasn't going to spend more time with him than he absolutely had to. 

"No Bad Touch Werewolf teaching Scott how to wolf," Stiles said more bluntly, shifting between Scott and the door like Cora was going to forcibly drag him off to werewolf lessons with her uncle. "I'll Google it if I have to."

Allison leaned forward to wrap her arms around Scott's shoulders protectively. "We are not _Googling_ how to be a werewolf. I'll ask my mom. She probably has pamphlets or something."

The Sheriff cleared his throat. "But first, you three are going home. To _sleep_." He glared, as if they weren't close to falling asleep standing up. "Scott, I'll be calling your mom later. If you haven't told her, I will. Now go home." He kept glaring until they got up from the table and slouched their way outside. 

It was still the hour that Stiles had called Stupid O'Clock in elementary school, when the sunlight was pink and everything was still. Police were gathered around in little clusters, doing things Scott admitted he didn't really understand. Most of them were in the woods at the crime scene—he could see their cars parked behind the house, as close as they could get without having to dodge trees. 

"Do you think we should go say bye to Derek first?" Scott twisted his head to stare off toward the woods. When he focused, he could hear the heartbeats of the officers down there. The crack of breaking twigs. Boots thumping against the ground. A murmur of conversation. 

_"—not finding any signs of wolfsbane poisoning, or even ground rowan," a woman said. "Whoever it was must have only caved his skull in a little."_

_"Are you sure he won't agree to go to the hospital?"_ The man sounded aggravated, but not dangerously so. Like someone who knew the answer to his question, and knew he wasn't going to like it, but had to ask anyway. _"Just for a scan? We don't know how werewolves react to suffocation."_

 _"I can hear you, you know."_ And _that_ was definitely Derek. Hoarse and tired, but Derek. 

"Whoa whoa _hey_." Stiles planted himself in front of Scott, both hands planted on his chest. Scott stopped walking. The ground near Stiles' feet had drag marks. He blinked at it, frowning. Had he done that? He must have, but...

It was so hard to think. 

Arms slipped around his waist, one on either side to guide him forward. Holding him back or propping him up, he wasn't sure. Maybe both. "We'll go see Derek," Allison said from his left. Her hand slipped under his shirt, warm palm flat against the skin of his side, fingertips dipped into the waistband of his borrowed shorts. "What's ten more minutes at this point?" 

"The horse isn't going to get us with all these cops around," Stiles agreed, tucking in so close to Scott that his hip kept bumping Allison's knuckles. "Probably. I mean, it's pretty— okay, let's not talk about it."

It took less time than Scott remembered, going from the backyard to the edge of the woods. In daylight, the rainbow oaks looked completely different. The leaves were unfurled, black faces all turned toward the east. Hints of rainbows glinted underneath them, but nothing like the show they put on at night. 

The trio aimed for the ambulance sitting closest to the edge of the woods, surrounded by vehicles—Sheriff's office, unmarked FBI, and one with the two-headed eagle of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Scott winced when he saw it; it was either Allison's mom or, more likely, a flunky that would be way too happy to report back what her daughter was getting involved in. Not that there was any chance of getting the Marshall on their side anyway; she'd just see it as another way Scott and Stiles were bad for Allison. Like they had any control over the havoc Jeff Davis brought down on Beacon Hills. 

The back doors of the ambulance were thrown wide open, two bare legs dangling out of it. Maneuvering through the collection of tightly packed cars when they were linked together as they were was a pain. None of them tried to let go. They just did their best to edge through the maze, sideways and one at a time when necessary.

[An odd frown twisted Derek's expression](http://yue-ix.parakaproductions.com/teenwolf/2015/derek_ambulance.jpg) as they walked up. He scratched at his chest absently, rolling pieces of drying treacle off his skin. Everything about him was sticky. The hair on his head spiked up around the bloodied bandage, and his body hair was matted down. He'd been stripped down to his underwear, treacle-sticky clothes piled on a piece of plastic nearby. Ragged edges showed where they'd been cut off, and a little flag marked it as #3. Someone had wrapped a baby blue shock blanket around his shoulders. It stuck like plastic wrap.

The teddy bear in his lap was mostly a healthy green, with shades of pink up around the ears and a couple blue spots that were fading rapidly. That was reassuring, mostly. Teddy bears didn't lie, even if the way Derek's eyes didn't seem to want to finish focusing looked pretty bad.

"What are you three doing here still?" Derek demanded suspiciously. "It's past your bedtime, isn't it?" 

Scott bumped the closest car with his leg. When it didn't immediately start an alarm, he leaned back against the hood, dragging Stiles and Allison with him. "We wanted to check on you." It was easy enough to admit. "The Sheriff said you'd been hit on the head pretty hard." 

"I'm fine." Derek shrugged, glancing around behind them, brows furrowed. "It takes more than a knock on the head to take out a werewolf. Did someone follow you?" 

There was a massive knocking of elbows and shoulders as they all tried to turn and look at once. 

"No one was supposed to." Allison planted his hands on the car and twisted further than Scott even wanted to think about, almost able to look directly behind herself. "Did you see someone?"

Hair-spikes bounced as Derek shook his head. "No, I just smelled something..." He sniffed the air again, more obviously this time. His bleary eyes focused on Scott. "How long have you been a werewolf?" 

Scott went still. "Uh... Yesterday? There was stuff in your mom's mouth, and..." He waved his fingers, because it made more sense than any of the words that wanted to come out of his mouth. "Stuff happens, I guess. I'm not sorry I saved her." 

Derek stared. Blinked. Stared some more, and then sighed and shook his head. "Could have been worse. Could have been Stiles."

"Hey!"

The corner of Derek's mouth quirked. He patted Scott's shoulder, leaving a faint hand print behind. "Go home, Scott. That's what the Sheriff told you to do, right?" 

Stiles scowled. "How did you— were you listening in?"

"I'm not an idiot." It should have been sharp, but the edges were completely wiped away by a smile. "Anyone can see that you're exhausted. Go get some sleep. We'll talk later, okay?" 

Reluctantly, Scott slid down the hood of the police car, landing heavily and wobbling. Derek snatched his hand before he could slide back again, holding him up while he found his balance. "Be careful, okay?" With the thoughtless ease that came from less than two hours of sleep in forty eight, he pressed a quick kiss to Derek's lips. 

Derek yanked away, eyes going wide with shock. A blush ran up his chest and neck, across his cheeks. "What was...?" 

Slow-dawning realization pierced through the fog, but as always Stiles and Allison came to the rescue. Just as Scott's stomach started to sink, they pounced, smacking matching kisses on Derek's cheeks. 

"Watch out for Jeff Davis," Stiles advised, patting Derek on his sticky shoulder and wincing when their skin parted with a gross ripping noise. "And take a shower. A really, really long shower."

"We'll be back, we promise!" was what Allison had to offer, along with a hug that left an entire side of her head sticky. Unlike Stiles, she didn't even try to get rid of it. "Bye! Feel better!"

Before Derek could recover from the shock, they ran for it. At a hundred yards Stiles started to say something. Scott and Allison shushed him until they were locked safe in the Jeep. 

Stiles clutched the steering wheel and stared ahead. "Well. That happened." He moved as if to rub the steering wheel, but the skin of his hand clung to it aggressively, treacle attaching to the hard plastic like glue. 

"That happened," Scott agreed tiredly, slumping hard into the passenger side door. "What happens next?"

"Sleep," Allison yawned from the backseat. "First we sleep. Then we figure everything else out." She was making the most of the marginally larger space, leaning back and stretching her legs out. Her arm slung around the seat to wrap around Scott's chest. The bits of it that were sticky from hugging Derek stuck to his t-shirt, collecting stray bits of dirt and lint every time she moved. "Sleep."

* * *

Stiles leaned over the top of his computer desk, examining the glossy array of pamphlets laid out over the top of his keyboard. The one he was most focusing on featured a drawing of a beta-shifted werewolf in a lotus position with a speech bubble saying "find your anchor". 

There were cartoon bluebirds involved. No one was going to get out of this with their dignity intact. 

"Okay, so according to this thing, you're supposed to be working on your deep breathing exercises," Stiles said, holding up Downward Facing Werewolf so Scott knew which one he was talking about. "Are you deep breathing, Scott?" 

On the left side of the computer monitor, Scott grimaced and stared downward, presumably at his own collection of werewolf paraphernalia. His hair poked around in damp, adorable curls that Stiles kind of desperately wanted to run his fingers through. "Yes?" 

In the other window Allison snorted and pushed further back in her chair, bottom of her feet taking up most of her screen. "That's for the full moon. Scott needs the activity book." She was busy doing something complicated with a piece of string, balancing little globes of light in the middle of a web. Unlike them, _she_ didn't need the help of papers and documents and nursery rhymes. Her family had a long, complicated history with people who went bump at all hours, day and night. Werewolf 101 was beneath her. "It has stickers. Scott has to use his claws. You'll need a penknife." 

"Uhhh..." Stiles shuffled through what he had laid out. When he didn't find it, he bent over to go through the shoe box of things he hadn't thought he'd need but had kept anyway. The day after they'd found out about Scott's new condition, Allison had shown up with boxes of every werewolf-related piece of paper she could get her hands on, and Mrs. Hale had given Scott some more after she'd gotten out of the hospital. That made for a lot of stuff. Allison's mom's office was in charge of everything from albino pixies to zerkathis, and if there was one thing governments loved doing, it was making useless pamphlets. 

He dug through the shoebox, flipping past a helpful lunar chart, a small book on the dangers and uses of mountain ash—highly combustible, necessary for full moon containment in the first few months, primary fuel source for Teslas—and a pyramid chart encouraging new werewolves to _Just say no! to being an omega_. 

_Clawsome Activities for the Young Werewolf_ turned out to be in a pile under his chair, and Stiles could easily see why he'd set it aside. It was an inch thick, and at first glance could have been mistaken for an actual book. It took flipping it open to see that half the pages were poster board, and a significant number of the rest were stickers. 

_Glitter_ stickers, of course. If there was one thing Stiles was learning from all of this, it was that being a werewolf was all about the bling and the dramatic entrances. It wasn't just a Hale thing, there was an entire guide book for it. Including a laminated card to keep in your pocket with pointers on how to lurk without breaking local loitering laws and what to wear to hide in the shadows like a proper creature of the night. Some jokes just wrote themselves. 

Grabbing the book, Stiles swung upright, holding it triumphantly overhead. "Okay, Scott, Awesome— sorry, _Clawsome_ Activities, first page is using your claws to... Scott?" Scott was still staring down at his desk. His claws weren't out—one thing Stiles had learned to look for—but there was a hint of extra sideburn on his face and point to his ears, which probably didn't mean much good either. "You okay?" 

"What?" Scott's head popped up. He gave himself a shake, shoulders hunching in. "Yeah, I— I'm fine, just..."

Allison's feet dropped to the floor and scooted closer. The knot of tangled string running between her fingers went limp, puddling on the desk around her hands. "What's wrong?" 

"It's nothing," Scott said too quickly, not looking at the webcam. 

Stiles didn't need to be a parent to know that tone of voice never actually meant nothing. He glanced over at Allison's side of the screen to see her frowning just as deeply as he was.

"Is it about the Hales?" she asked gently. The magic string between her fingers unraveled, knots coming loose in a wave of green and purple until they landed in a neat coil on her palm. It twisted tighter and tighter, until the string was a perfect little cone of color. "They'll be fine, Scott. They're werewolves."

"I just wish they could be safer, that's all," Scott muttered. He rolled his shoulders and sunk down, crossing his arms. A hint of claw poked at his shirt sleeves, catching without punching through the cloth. "No one believes it's Jeff Davis killing people. They're sitting ducks. Wolves. Sitting wolves, which sounds a lot less vulnerable than ducks, but it's still pretty bad." 

"Well, they can't exactly pack up the horses and live in a hotel for a week," Stiles said, then caught himself and corrected, "Most of the horses." Because there was definitely at least one that was small enough to pass for a dog, and he kind of thought the robohorses could be temporarily dismantled. Maybe the ectoplasmic types could share a shoebox, since they didn't take up physical space. "Derek believes us. He'll keep an eye out." 

Scott made a wounded sound. "But Derek already almost died once. Mrs. Hale is an alpha, and she would have died if we hadn't found her in time. If Jeff Davis can get wolfsbane, what else can he do?"

Allison flinched. Stiles looked away from the monitor, down at one of the packets of werewolf stuff. Being a werewolf was supposed to make someone nearly indestructible. Faster, stronger, with claws and teeth that could take out almost anything. Instead it just seemed like it made people vulnerable in different ways. 

"They'll be okay," he finally said, looking up when the silence started getting too heavy. "They have to be." 

"I just... I have a bad feeling," Scott mumbled, sinking so low in his desk chair that his chin was close to the bottom of the screen. "I wish there was something we could do. But we can't. It's not like we could just go see them or anything." 

Another pause, but lighter. Thoughtful. Holding up a finger, Allison got up from her desk and vanished from camera range. A second later a door creaked shut. Then she was back, leaning in close to the camera. "Why couldn't we?" she whispered. "We did it once, right?"

Scott's looked up. His eyes gleamed yellow. "But what would we do?" he asked. "We can't just show up. And what if we get caught? Mrs. Hale could charge us for trespassing for real this time." 

"We have permission to be there," Stiles reminded him, fighting to keep his voice down. His dad wasn't home, but when he got carried away the neighbors could hear. And he definitely didn't want them hearing this. "Didn't you read the papers we signed? As long as we're working for the greater welfare of the ranch and its inhabitants, we're in the clear."

"And we wouldn't be causing any problems." Allison bounced in her computer chair, eyes bright. "We know our way around, now."

"Sort of like a patrol." The very tips of Scott's claws scratched the surface of his desk, circling around in an absent spiral. "Making sure they're all safe." 

Stiles held his breath, waiting for Scott to decide. He was pretty sure Allison did too. If Scott said no, he was still going to do it anyway, but he'd seen this movie and had zero interest in being the idiot who rushed in and died right before the actual hero saved the day. 

But Scott's shoulders came back, and his jaw firmed. "We can meet in the woods behind the shack, so they don't see us coming." 

Tension popped like a rainbow water balloon. "Great! Half an hour, keep your phone on silent! Love you!" 

Pamphlets scattered around his feet as he burst out of his chair, grabbing up his old backpack. It still held all the detritus that was remained of senior year—pens, notebooks, wads of old papers. Stiles dumped it across the bed, giving it a shake to dislodge the last bit of trash. Then he started packing. Flashlight, some rope from an old knot tying experiment, a couple fresh shirts. Gloves, since he still had tender spots from the last time he'd had to pull thorns out of his palm. Lighter fluid and some matches, a teddy bear in case anyone was injured. 

By the time he'd finished the backpack strained at the seams, worn blue canvas barely holding everything. He tossed it into the back of the Jeep and pulled out. With luck he'd be back before his dad had time to do his usual drive-through checkup.

Stiles assumed there would be no luck. There usually wasn't. 

After driving out to Three Moon Ranch every day for weeks and walking practically every inch of it daily, Stiles knew exactly where to go. He drove straight past the spot where he'd parked his Jeep last time, turned right, and followed a little dirt road into the woods. It was technically on the Hale property, but it had never been cleared. The trees didn't glow in the dark, which meant he had to keep his lights on or risk driving into a ditch. 

Which was the only reason he didn't plow into Scott when he dropped down in the middle of the road.

"AHHHHHH!" Stiles slammed his breaks, body jerking against his seat belt. "What the hell, man?" he shouted, smacking his hands against the steering wheel. 

Scott grinned. The headlights caught his eyes at an odd angle that made them glow green-gold in the dark. "You told me to practice werewolfing," he said, voice muffled by thick steel and glass. "Come on, Allison's parked over here." 

"I didn't tell you to give me a heart attack," Stiles grumbled to himself, but followed Scott at a slow crawl. 

Allison had parked her Mazda a few feet back off the dirt path, behind a low rise and some awkwardly high bushes. The door was open and her legs rested out the driver's side window, heels bouncing as she flipped through her phone. 

Stiles eased his girl in next to her, making sure to leave plenty of space in case they needed to make a quick escape. Which they wouldn't need to do. After all, they were allowed. They were adults! They'd signed forms! They stayed up past their bedtimes on a regular basis and thumbed their noses at sleep! 

As a battle cry, it needed work.

"Okay, let's get this over with." Stiles climbed out of the Jeep, slung the backpack over his shoulder and carefully shut the door to minimize the slamming. Werewolf hearing was too good to take chances with. The flashlight flicked on, beam cutting through the darkness with lightsaber ease that would have been handy any of the other dozens of times he'd been wandering in the dark lately. He was officially never leaving home without one again. "Quick circle of the property, check for anything suspicious, and back to the cars."

Scott hung back. His eyes hadn't changed from yellow, and Stiles didn't think that was an effect of the flashlight. Someone was getting comfortable with his new species. "I want to double-check in the barns, too, in case Jeff Davis is hiding with the rest of the horses," he added. "That's where we found him last time."

Rather than sitting up like a normal human being, Allison pulled the door closed with her knees, grabbed the hood and slid out the window like Spider-Woman. Her much-smaller bag hung from her shoulder, heavy with the promise of violence. "I'm with Scott. We check everywhere, or we might as well not check anywhere." 

There was a lot of everywhere to check. Stiles checked the time on his phone, grimaced, and shoved it into his back pocket. His dad was going to be pissed. Oh well. "Let's get started then." 

Their starting point was a ways back from the fence lines of the Hale property, but with an actual road to follow it was only a thousand times easier to get there, even if the way twisted enough to double the distance. Woods that had been terrifying when they'd first been in them a month ago were almost familiar. The Love Shack glowed in the distance, throwing sparks up into the air where they popped into heart-shaped confetti. It was a reassuring sight. Incredibly tacky, but reassuring. 

He kept his flashlight on until the gate came into view, right at the inside edge of the tree line. Then he shoved it into the holder on the side of his backpack meant for a water bottle. Scott went over first, in a clean leap and a perfect three point landing that had to be from the werewolf thing. Allison followed, with two running steps and a flip, topping Scott by two points and a pose that looked like it could segue into an ass kicking with ease. 

"Show offs," Stiles muttered. He tossed his backpack over and climbed more sedately, keeping one foot and one hand on the gate at all times, and watching his feet as much as he could in the dark. To Allison and Scott's credit, they didn't snicker too loudly when he dropped the last two feet and almost fell back onto his ass. 

"If you've got it, flaunt it." Allison twirled, throwing a hip out and striking a pose. 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Stiles groused, throwing an arm around each of their shoulders and propelling them forward. "When we're not sneaking around in the dark, remind me to tell you two how hot that was. For now, mission." 

They crept through the shadows, giving the Shack's glow a wide berth and circling around the house as far as they dared. Nighttime animals and plants made themselves known with chirps, rustling leaves and the occasional burst of _Never Gonna Give You Up_ from Peter's mimic lilies. 

Halfway between the house and the training barn, Scott slowed. "Do you smell that?" He twisted, looking around. Shadows from the few lights on the property cut across his face, sharpening his cheekbones and hiding his eyes other than the glowing golden iris. His teeth flashed when he spoke, sharp and white in the darkness. "It smells like... do the Hales have a fireplace?" 

"Kind of warm to have a fire going, though." Allison's voice was calm. The knife that suddenly appeared in her hand, however, was not. "Are you sure, Scott?" 

"Yeah." Scott's nose wrinkled, and just like that the illusion of a predator was gone, and all that was left was Scott in funny makeup. He rubbed at his chest. Claws sliced through his shirt, and he didn't even notice. "It smells weird, but it's smoke." 

Foreboding slithered through Stiles' stomach, down into his legs where it rooted him to the ground. He turned his head to stare at the Hale house. It looked normal. Quiet, the way it should have been at nearly midnight a week before the full moon. A light flickered in one of the windows on the first floor.

It was too much to hope that someone was doing some late night reading. "Allison?"

"Yeah?"

"Fire's one of the things that can kill a werewolf, isn't it?" 

He heard her breath hiss in through her teeth. Something clicked. It sounded like a safety being switched off. "Yeah. It is."

They took off running. Scott pulled ahead immediately, legs pumping so fast they blurred, sending him leaping over obstacles with ease. Allison and Stiles followed at a more human pace. Stiles would have liked to pretend it was because they were watching out for danger, but after a few hundred yards of sprinting he started to remember why he'd spent his high school lacrosse career on the bench. His muscles and lungs started to burn. Blood rushed to his head for an instant headache that only made breathing that much harder. 

He wasn't so far behind that he didn't see it when Scott tried to run up the steps and a blue light flashed. Scott flew backwards, tumbling into Stiles' legs and taking him down too. His backpack dropped as he slammed into the ground and rolled, tucking himself in to minimize broken bones. They rolled to a bruised stop in the middle of the grass. Stiles panted for air, side aching and heart pounding somewhere in his temples. Cold, dew-damp grass soaked through the back of his shirt. 

Allison appeared like an angel of mercy, haloed by the light from the Shack. It lasted right up until she grabbed Stiles by the shoulder and yanked him upright so hard that he felt his brain bounce inside his skull. "Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine." With Allison's help, Stiles managed to get upright enough to cradle his head. It ached. Everything did. He could feel a bruise developing across his stomach and another one on his forehead from Scott's foot. By the way the world spun, he might even have had a concussion. "What happened?" 

"Mountain ash?" Scott asked, looking over to Allison for confirmation. "It was in one of those worksheets you gave me." 

He vaguely remembered the worksheet Scott mentioned, but not well. Something about Teslas. "So what does that mean? We can't go in the house?" The longer Stiles stayed upright, the easier it was to keep doing so. That promised good things for his survival. Which was excellent news, since everything else was looking pretty dismal on that front.

In a flash, Allison was off, running for the porch. "It means someone doesn't want them to be able to get out!" She hit the point that had tossed Scott back and went straight over it, then turned around, squinting downward. "Stiles, where's the flashlight?"

He fumbled for it, finding his backpack in the dark and feeling around until the cool plastic touched his fingertips. It flickered uncertainly when he turned it on. The glass was cracked from the fall. But it worked, which was all that mattered. 

Armed with light, they searched across the porch and yard, parting the overgrown grass to look at the dirt. A fine layer of of sparkly red horse shit had burned a line into the ground. The very center of it gleamed in the flashlight in a perfect, unbroken line of black glitter.

Allison dragged her foot through the line, then reeled back with a pained cry. She fell on her ass, hurriedly yanking at her boot laces. The sole sizzled, disintegrating. Hurriedly she pulled her boot off and threw it away. Her heel was red and blistered, the sock patchy in places. She peeled off the other one and tossed it, standing up in only her bare feet.

The line of ash was smudged, but still solid. Scott held his palms up and leaned. Where he touched the air glowed blue—the mountain ash wasn't broken. 

Inside the house the light from the flames grew brighter. There weren't any howls or yells, no sign at all that there was a family of werewolves in there at all. Smoke grew heavier in the air, musky-sweet but acrid. 

Kneeling down, Stiles held his hand just over the line. It wasn't hot, but he could feel the air snapping under his skin, the way pop rocks did when they got wet. There was no way to get at the ash without going through the acid shit. He didn't doubt that if he touched it, his hand would have the same fate as Allison's boot. "We need a shovel, or— or water, or something. The sheet said it's used in Teslas, werewolves can't cross it and—" 

_Aha._

Stiles dropped his bag to the ground, yanking it open and digging through the junk he'd piled in there. His lighter fluid and matches had sunk to the very bottom of his bag. He pulled the little metal bottle out, ripped off the cap and poured it over the line until it had soaked down through the grass and dirt. 

"What are you doing?" Allison leaned over to watch him work. 

He struck a match, holding it up until the flame was steady. "Finding out what highly combustible means." It dropped. 

Fireworks crackled. The lighter fluid went up first, a quick flare of orange that vanished into a blue spray sparks. They flared up with a _whoosh_ , sending Stiles falling backwards with a shout, nose hairs tingling. Flames ran in either direction, following the line of ash. It hugged hugged the building close, cutting behind Peter's roses, around the building and out of sight. 

A wall of light rose up, arching over the house in a dome that crackled with fire. Bits of pine straw and leaves caught, pinpricks of golden light behind the blue. The dome contracted, shimmered, and then exploded in a rain of sparks.

This time when they ran up the porch steps, nothing stopped them.

* * *

Smoke. _Wolfsbane_ smoke. Derek could feel it filling his lungs, taste the flowery sweetness of it as it slid down his throat. It burned all the way through him, expanding to taint every part of him like the poison it was. He knew he needed to get out; the room was getting hot, and where there was wolfsbane smoke there was fire, but he couldn't _move_. The weight of smoke held him pinned in bed, unable to even move as it got harder and harder to breathe. 

"Derek?" A voice shouted. Scott, he thought, but it was raspy and harsh, impossible to be sure. Somewhere a door slammed, and feet pounded up the stairs. Three new heartbeats, all of them fast with terror. "Derek! Cora! Laura!"

"Damn it, why is this house so big?"

"Scott, third floor! Find Isaac! Stiles, other end of the hall!" Allison ordered, her voice muffled and scratchy. "Yell if you find someone!" 

Thought filtered through the poisonous fog. They were going to get themselves killed. They were wyr. Two of them were, anyway. How long would Scott be able to last before the wolfsbane took him down too? 

He tried to call out, to tell them to run, but all he could manage was a whimper that turned into a choking cough. His lungs ached for lack of oxygen, and his head spun. 

The footsteps continued, more methodically. Pause, step step, door. Pause, step step, door. Someone shouted— _Cora!_ —and then there was a fresh rush of sound, far away. Allison called something, her voice lost behind the crack of wood and a crackle of flames. 

Good. _Good_. They found Cora. She was smaller. The wolfsbane would get to her faster. Laura's room was just next to Cora's. They'd get out at least, and then the others would run if they had any sense at all. He could hear the fire picking up strength. It was on the stairs now, flickering orange behind his eyelids. They wouldn't find him in time. 

Peace settled over him, thicker than the wolfsbane. He'd die. His pack would live. _Scott, Allison and Stiles would live_.

Derek relaxed, and stopped trying to breathe. Thought spun away into darkness. 

"—found him!" Someone shook him hard—Allison? It was a woman's voice, high-pitched and loud with panic. But it couldn't be Allison. She was supposed to be gone, supposed to have run. "I found Derek! I— fuck!"

Another shake rocked his head on his neck. Orange light flashed behind his closed eyelids. When he tried to open them all he could see was Allison's shadow against a moving background, cloth wrapped around her face. 

Flames flickered behind her, visible through the open door. _Fire_. It was here. They were trapped. The room was hot now, making him sweat. He tried tell Allison to go, to get out while she could, but nothing came out when he opened his mouth. There wasn't air to breathe, much less to speak.

She seemed to know what he was trying to say anyway, because the look she shot him was full of venom. "Not a chance. I'm going to save you if it's the last thing I do." Hooking her arms under his shoulder, she lifted him with a pained sounding grunt. Derek slid off the edge of the bed with a heavy thump that slammed his head against the bed frame. Part of the floor swayed under him, buckling, burning through the carpet. Allison dragged him with desperate tugs and yanks, a few feet at a time. Then the tugging stopped. 

Glass shattered.

Fresh night air washed over Derek's face. He choked, rolling over and clutching at his chest. Wolfsbane writhed under his skin, down in his stomach and veins. 

"This is going to hurt," Allison apologized. She slid her arms under his shoulders again, heaving him up. _Now_ Derek had enough in him to help a little, lurching to his knees and letting her force him up higher. He didn't realize what she was doing until he fell forward and broken glass sliced forearms open. Allison kept pushing, shoving him forward, up through the broken window. Over. 

Falling. Derek hit the pitched roof and rolled right off the edge. He crashed into the ground. Bone shattered, puncturing his organs and cracking his head. Blood at the back of his tongue. For a moment he could taste the stars as they twinkled down. Brighter and brighter, a wall of them reaching up into the void. 

No. Not stars. Fire. The house was on fire. There was a figure above, crawling out the window above. Flames filled the room behind her with an ugly orange glow. She leaped, hit the same roof he had and slid to the edge, then over. She cried out as she landed, arm twisting under her with a snap. 

Derek tried to sit up. He managed a few inches before gravity yanked him back down. Gritting his teeth, he tried again, forcing his way to his knees. Broken bones ground together. Wolfsbane poisoning was slowing the healing. His head ached. 

It didn't matter. 

Inch by painful inch, he rose to his knees, crawling over to where Allison was groaning on the ground. Derek wrapped an arm around her, pushing her over against the screaming pain of broken bones. The fire was too close. They had to move.

Allison didn't fight, letting him shove her away from the burning building. It was slow work. Leaning against each other they managed to get far enough away that the fire didn't burn hot against their skin. They collapsed there, too exhausted and hurt to move further. 

The air was still thick with smoke, too hot for comfort, but so much cleaner than inside the house had been. Allison smelled like dirt and ashes, a hint of blood and charred hair. Pain. Every breath of it washed the wolfsbane from his lungs, made it easier to think. 

"You— okay?" His voice was unfamiliar, scorched away by smoke. 

"Yeah," she managed to say between clenched teeth, a lie so blatant that Derek wished he could laugh. Her good arm went around his shoulders, pulling him in against her chest. "You?" 

"Yeah." They leaned against each other, breathing in ragged gasps "Scott and Stiles— Laura? I heard—" A cough rattled his throat, cutting him off before he could finish his question.

She shook her head, cheek damp against his. "I don't know. Your— we got your mom, and Cora. Peter. I don't know about anyone else."

Derek closed his eyes. If they were still in there, it was too late. The house was a mess of flames and collapsing timber, burning up through the roof into the night. No one was going to survive that. 

Hooves sounded in the distance, mostly hidden behind the roar of the fire. It was such a familiar noise that Derek didn't register it until they stopped. He looked up. 

Jeff Davis stood proud, silhouetted against the fire, gnarled horn reaching for the sky and his wide eyes an unblinking red. A gas can dangled between his teeth, sloshing as he danced in a circle. His head came down, horn pointed straight at them. 

Instinct had Derek moving even before Jeff Davis. Lunging, he wrapped himself around Allison and rolled, covering her body with his just as the horse charged. He had a glimpse of hooves and teeth as Jeff Davis ran right over them, a ton of weight cracking down on already-shattered bones. He felt his spine snap, felt the moment his legs went dead. A horn scored a line of pain across his back, ripping his shirt off his shoulders. Another blow and his shoulder blade went too. 

Derek grunted, ducking his head and trying to hold on. He braced himself, keeping as much of the damage from hitting Allison as possible. Blood dripped down his temple, splattering over her cheeks. She was screaming something about letting her up, about getting help. He could barely hear it through the ringing in his ears. It didn't matter anyway. Jeff Davis was going to kill him. He wasn't in good enough condition to fight, and the wolfsbane was still keeping him from healing. But if he left Allison, it would just make her the next target. 

If only one of them was going to get out of this mess, it was going to be her.

Then the horse turned, lashing out in a flurry of kicks that sent them tumbling apart. Jeff Davis followed Derek, snapping and kicking. Desperate Derek grabbed for Jeff Davis' nose, pinching the nostrils closed and clinging with all the strength he had left. The horse shook his head and bounced on his hind legs, coming down hard on Derek's elbow. Bones cracked like glass. His hand popped open, claws stained red. 

Jeff Davis screamed, baring his teeth and rearing up again. Before he could come down, something cracked into his bleeding nose. He startled backward, head swinging around to face his new opponent. 

"Hey! Horse!" Allison wound up for another throw. "Yeah, I'm talking to you! Why don't you pick on someone who can fight back? Come on!" The next one sailed through the air, but Jeff Davis scrambled back, wings fluttering in outrage. 

"Allison— don't—" Derek tried to push to his feet, but they still weren't working. The wolfsbane had slowed his healing too much. "Go get help!" 

She stepped in closer, forcing Jeff Davis to back off more with another throw. "Listen!" 

At first, he didn't understand. Then a wail of sirens cut through the dull ringing in his head, popping the bubble between his ears. They were close enough that he could hear the grind of their brakes behind the snap of the fire at their backs. 

Through vision stained red by blood rather than werewolf instinct, Derek saw firetruck pull in, followed by an ambulance and what looked like every cop in the county. Firefighters poured out, shouting orders at each other. The cops were right behind. _Saved_. 

Jeff Davis drew back, circling. Red and blue lights flashed over his hide. He seemed to take in the scene, looking back and forth between the emergency services and Derek. Sparks flared as he pawed the dirt.

Then he put his head down and charged. 

" _No_!" Allison threw herself against his side, sending him sprawling. Metal flashed in her hand, too fast for Derek to follow in his condition. Gunshots. A scream of a horse in pain. The wet sound of a unicorn horn sliding through a body. Allison made a tiny, desperate choking noise, and the gun dropped. Her knees buckled. She fell. 

Jeff Davis stepped back, weaving. Blood stained his horn and dripped from the bullet wound in his flanks. The gas cannister fell with a splash. He seemed to be looking around, taking in the scene. Then he wheeled, galloping away in a flash of hooves and broken feathers.

Derek dragged himself over to where Allison had fallen, using his one good arm. "You idiot. Why— why did you..."

Allison smiled, coughed. Blood stained her lips. Her heart beat raggedly, louder in his ears than the house fire behind them. "Told you I'd save you," she whispered, breath bubbling. Her eyes slipped closed.

Paramedics and police swarmed. Hands grabbed at his shoulders, his arms, at _Allison_. Derek fought to claw his way to freedom. He wasn't strong enough to do more than hook his claws in their clothes.

"Let me go, you can't—" Useless legs dragged as they pulled him away, leaving a cluster of paramedics to surround Allison's still body. "Allison!" 

He couldn't see her through the press of people, but he could hear her heart slowing. 

Someone came through the crowd, smelling like smoke and ash and pack. Scott and Stiles were suddenly there on either side of him, holding him up. Cora was there too, and Isaac. His mother at the back of the crowd, eyes glowing red. The whole pack. They'd saved them after all. 

"We're losing her!" 

"—went through a lung, I can't—" 

"—Marshall's daughter, there's a DNB—" 

Derek closed his eyes, turning his face into Scott's shoulder. 

"The hell with this! Let me through!" The alpha's voice was rough, but still rang with power. Every werewolf present lifted their heads to see Talia Hale forcing her way past a pair of deputies like they were wet tissue. "Let me _through_! She's a member of my pack, you have no right—" 

"Talia." The Sheriff appeared from the press of uniforms, and even through the smoke Derek could smell his grief. He stood between the alpha and Allison, arms spread. "She has a Do Not Bite order on file. If you do this, I'll have to arrest you."

"Is it more recent than May?" Talia demanded, baring her fangs threateningly. "On May sixteenth, that girl signed a liability waiver stating that in case of emergency I have authority to bite her, just like the one your son signed. We can sort it out with the lawyers later, but if I don't bite her _right now_ there's not going to be a later!"

The Sheriff still hesitated. Allison's heart slowed. Paused. Beat again, barely. Derek strained to hear the next one. Another second, and the Sheriff stepped aside. "Let the alpha through. If this comes back, you lot get to argue with her mother."

As soon as the paramedics parted, Talia rushed forward and dropped to her knees. Her face shifted, fangs flashing in the firelight. They deep sank into Allison's forearm. Then she bowed her head, pressing an ear to Allison's chest. Derek held his breath. 

Allison's heart beat skipped. Slowed. Steadied. She jerked and gasped, choking on blood as her punctured lung started to heal. 

A raucous cheer went up, first with the werewolves, then the wyr as they caught on a beat later. Stiles whooped, punching the air, then hurriedly grabbed up Derek again when he started to slip sideways. Scott whipped him around for a hug, lifting him entirely off his useless feet. The pack surged together, clinging in a mass of tears and char, supporting each other as their home burned. 

The Sheriff pushed his way through, parting the werewolf sea. "Okay, okay, pipe down, we've still got injured to see to." Authority rolled off him as he touched shoulders, pushing people in the direction of where he wanted them to go. "Scott, get Derek over to an ambulance, I don't think he's going to get to skip on a hospital ride this time. Stiles, you too. What the hell were you—" 

Lightning crackled in a clear sky, cutting the Sheriff off mid-rant. A shriek rent the air, blood-curdlingly familiar. Thunder boomed, shaking the ground with a heavy crack. Another flash of lightning forked down, outlining the shadow of Jeff Davis on the roof of the barn. He reared, leaping for the air. Tiny wings stretched out, flapping furiously to keep him steady as pegasus magic lifted him up. Legs tucked under his chest, he dived. 

Someone yelled. "Everyone down!" 

They hit the dirt as Jeff Davis swooped. Something dropped, scattering through the crowd—horse shit. Where it landed people screamed and rolled as it ate through their clothes. The Sheriff shouted as one of them hit him in the shoulder. He yanked his jacket off, tossing it away with one hand as he reached for his gun with the other. 

The first gunshot blast cracked so loud Derek thought it was another lightning strike. More followed, filling the air. Green light sparked as some of the deputies used magic, bolts of power singing as they arched through the air. Jeff Davis dodged and wove, flinging acid shit everywhere he went. But there was only one of him and dozens of officers. He climbed higher to avoid the bullets until he was barely visible, and his missiles were missing by a wide margin. Frustrated, he screamed again and soared higher, vanishing into the night sky. Slowly the officers came out from behind their cover, guns still trained on the empty sky.

"Of course he can fly," Stiles grumbled in Derek's ear. "You didn't think that was worth mentioning?"

"He never did before!" Derek protested weakly. 

"It's like he develops powers to match his stupid plots," Scott muttered. "And why did he come _back_? That's— that's so _stupid_." 

"Horror movie," Stiles muttered. For some reason, it made Scott snort a laugh. Derek restrained himself to rolling his eyes, since everything else hurt too much. 

The Sheriff shook his head, rising from his defensive crouch. He holstered his weapon and looked around. With the threat gone, people started getting back to work. Quieter now, more wary. "Stiles, Derek, medical attention. I expect to see you both at the hospital."

"A _you were right Stiles_ would be nice!" Stiles yelled at his father's back. He got a wave in answer. 

"You were right, Stiles," Derek muttered, dropping his head to Scott's shoulder. "We should have listened sooner."

Stiles flashed him a quick smile and patted his shoulder. "It doesn't count if you say it." 

Scott carried Derek like a baby as they made their way over to the closest ambulance. Cora and Laura trailed behind, leaning on each other for balance. No one commented on the indignity of it, which Derek wasn't about to question. They passed Allison and his mother, still sitting on the ground and clutching her newest wolf's hand. Paramedics surrounded them, getting Allison stabilized and loaded onto a litter, but the work was less frantic. She'd live now. 

The paramedic was the same woman from the last time he'd been almost killed by Jeff Davis. Part of her afro had been burned away by Jeff Davis' ballistic assault, but she still grinned, cheeks spattered with soot. "I thought I'd see you again."

"He has a back injury," Scott explained, shuffling Derek over to the little wheeled bed. He set Derek down carefully, arranging his legs up on the bed when Derek couldn't. "Stiles has smoke inhalation, and I think there was wolfsbane in the smoke I breathed."

She nodded, smile fading just a little. "Put him on a litter, we'll get to him. Humans first."

"Tattle-tale," Stiles groused. He didn't fight when the woman grabbed his arm and yanked him away for whatever they did to people who'd run into a burning house. Derek wasn't sure. Probably more than a teddy bear.

Scott settled next to Derek, one hand on his knee. Part of his hair had been scorched off too, and he kept rubbing his chest like it hurt. "Do you think Jeff Davis will come back again?" 

Derek thought for a second, then shook his head. "No." Not right away, at least, and not in Beacon Hills. Jeff Davis didn't like being beaten. It was why they'd never been able to race him, even though he was one of the fastest horses they had. If he lost, he'd never run on a track again. It hadn't taken many embarrassing second attempts before they'd realized it wasn't worth it and put him to stud. 

This time he'd had lost, and lost big. There was no denying it. The Sheriff knew he was a threat. The pack had survived his attack. Even Allison was going to be okay, once she finished turning. He'd never come back to a place he'd lost this badly. 

It was over.

* * *

Allison woke up to the quiet beeping of machines, under about a thousand blankets all tucked up to her chin. The air smelled like bleach and disinfectant, a hint of powdery perfume and illness. Sunlight poured in from a barred window, slicing across the linoleum floor and up the green-painted wall. Stuffed animals were piled on top of her, facing the head of the bed. Plastic eyes glittered hopefully. Dozens of stitched-on smiles grinned. Her skin crawled. 

For a long second she stared at them, then turned her eyes up at the ceiling tiles. It was obvious she was in a hospital. Which made sense, because the last thing she remembered was choking on blood after being stabbed in the stomach. That kind of thing tended to put people in the hospital, when it didn't put them in the morgue. 

The fact that _she_ wasn't in the morgue felt oddly far away. She remembered seeing Jeff Davis charge. Remembered thinking that Derek wasn't going to survive another stabbing, werewolf or not. Remembered rolling them over and pulling the trigger. Remembered dying. 

She should have been buried six feet under ground. Instead she was buried under stuffed animals. Her throat and stomach hurt, and she had bandages basically everywhere, but she was alive. Life had officially reached new levels of bizarre. 

Moving as carefully as she could, Allison shifted a few inches upward. The plushies shifted together in a wave, wobbling but not falling. They'd been arranged in animal types, from prey to predator, with the occasional dragon and naga lurking at the edges, and then further sorted by color. Stiles' work, definitely. She squinted, trying to get a count. 

"I always knew that those boys would be trouble." 

She yelped and flailed backwards. The animals toppled from their pyramid in a wave, bunnies and bears and puppies scattering across the floor. One of the birds rolled to a stop against her mother's booted foot. 

Victoria Argent, in full Marshall regalia—uniform, holstered guns, knives and badge—sat in the chair next to the bed. A pamphlet was unfolded over her knees, the words _So You Have A Wyrwolf In The Family_ stretched across the top in a cheery cursive typeface. Delicately she closed the pamphlet, folding it along the original lines with crisp, clean pinches. 

"Your father wanted to be here," she said, eyes locked on the glossy paper as she folded and refolded, opened it and started again. The dark blue cloth of her uniform made her look pasty. Or maybe it wasn't just the uniform. A faint tremor ran through her hands, making the paper shake. "But safety regulations allow for only a single human person before you meet your alpha. I always supported that, but I never thought I would be on this side of it." 

The words settled over Allison's skin, heavier than the blankets. Since she'd already ruined the pyramid of animals, she finished sitting up. The bed and pillows crunched slightly with every move, layered with plastic under the sheets. She could smell it, too, a fine thread of sharp-bitter running along the bleach scent of the rest of the hospital room. 

Closing her eyes, Allison took a breath. Held it. A hundred different scents registered to her nose. Some of them she knew, some of them she didn't, but she could smell them all. Down the hall two nurses were cheerfully bickering over where to go for lunch. 

"My alpha?" Allison asked, then swallowed in surprise. Her voice was lower, rough with smoke inhalation. It didn't sound like her at all. "So I'm..."

The paper in her mothers hands crumbled. "A werewolf now, yes. That _woman_ ," she spat, "Alpha Hale, claimed you for her pack. Apparently there was a bite waiver hidden in that stack of papers she had you sign. I've already spoken to a lawyer, and they say we might be able to argue that the waiver wasn't knowingly signed, that she'd deliberately hidden it in—"

" _Mom_." Moving hurt her stomach, but Allison leaned over to grab her mother's wrist. "Mom, I read everything I signed. I knew the waiver was there." 

Victoria went still. She smiled. It was like the glitter of a well-honed knife, sharp and deadly. "Of course you didn't," she said carefully, each word cut out of the air by her smile. "You wouldn't sign something like that."

"I _knew_. I read it. I signed it." She just hadn't thought it would be used. Which had been stupid. Really, really stupid. But she'd just wanted to avoid having to explain to colleges why her perfect record wasn't so perfect. "It's okay."

Her mother's smile dulled, and her shoulders rounded. "No, Allison. It's not." She stood, tossing the brochure into a trash can. "Alpha Hale is waiting to speak to you, along with the rest of your _pack_." The word sounded like it should have sizzled on her tongue. "I need to speak to the Sheriff about the warrant for that horse, and to research more... biddable packs in the area. I expect you to think very hard about your choices, and precisely how much you wish to be a _Hale_." 

Allison clenched her fists in the top-most blanket, a pretty blue knitted thing that she was pretty sure came from Scott's house. Her throat ached. "I will. But you might not like my answer."

Steel toes clicked on the floor as her mother strode out the door. Someone asked a question, but her footsteps didn't stop. 

"Well, that sounded like a lovely mother-daughter reunion." Talia Hale stood in the doorway, soot-streaked and smiling. She was wrapped in a bright pink robe, with matching slippers and a werebunny on the breast. Silver-streaked hair clouded around her shoulders, frizzled and knotted. Other faces peeked in around her, jostling for the spots closest to the door. 

It took some work to force a smile, but Allison did. "She'll come around."

Mrs. Hale hummed thoughtfully and cocked her head, eyes flashing red. "Are you alright? Tell the truth."

The words _I'm fine_ hit Allison's lips and stalled. She tried to say them, but no matter how many times she opened her mouth they refused to come out. Her throat worked, lips curling around the sounds and still, nothing. Her throat just got tighter, and her brain buzzed. _Truth truth tell the truth_. 

Finally she sniffled and shook her head, bending her knees to curl around them. "No."

The bed crackled and swayed. Mrs. Hale settled next to her, one arm sliding around her shoulders. Scott and Stiles slid in with her, settling on the other side of the bed and curling around her back and side. They pressed in close, a comforting presence even through all the blankets. 

Allison hid her face against her alpha's chest. "Where's Derek? Is he..." 

"He's okay," Stiles said, pressing close against her front. He smelled like smoke, just like half of the rest of them did, and Scott's face was streaked with soot. Allison still wanted to push them over and roll in them because _they did it_ , they _were alive_. "His back is hurt really bad, and it's going to be a few days before it heals, but he'll get better." 

"And Jeff Davis is gone," Scott added, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing tight. "Stiles' dad said someone saw him crossing into Mexico. He's not coming back."

A shudder of relief went through Allison, rising up through her chest and coming out as a choked hiccup. "Thank God. I thought..."

"You saved him." One of Mrs. Hale's hands ran over her hair. There was a hitch in her voice that seem like it was from the smoke-inhalation. She kissed the top of Allison's head. "Thank you."

Taking that as a cue, the rest of the pack poured in around them, squeezing onto the bed until their weight made it groan. Isaac sat at her feet. Liam draped over them. Boyd and Erica took either side of her legs, and Laura squished in next to Stiles, Cora just below her. Even Mason found a corner of the bed for his own. In the space of a few minutes, Allison was just as covered by werewolves as she'd been by stuffed animals. In spite of everything she did, the tears welled up and poured over. She let herself cry.

* * *

Scott, Stiles and Allison perched on a fence under one of the flowering orchid trees and watched the construction workers rebuild the house. Music played loudly, a siren chorus breaking through the bang and crunch and grind. 

The hole where the house should have been was the only thing out of place. Everything else had a stark, painful normalcy. Laura barked orders on the training course, and Mrs. Hale and Peter were working on gentling a frank-n-pony that they'd purchased at auction. The horses had gotten used to the noise, mostly. The pegasus herds had started to spend more time in the air and less on the ground, and every now and then one of the robots got loose and squirted oil all over things. Things adjusted. Life went on. 

Technically, none of them _had_ to be there just then. Official pack things happened after the work was done for the day, and they didn't have to work anymore. But there was something they needed to do. 

At the other end of the dirt lane Derek walked out of the main barn leading a massive blood-red unicorn with a fluffy white bunny tail. It was far enough away that a human wouldn't have been able to tell who it was, but Scott could now. He could see the way Derek's shirt clung to his arms, the way he ran a hand over the horse's neck when it shied away from a shadow. 

The way Derek smiled when he returned Scott's wave. 

They watched as Derek led the horse over to one of the pastures and let it go, then strolled toward them at a sedate walk. Stiles fidgeted, making the fence creak under them, and Allison's heart beat picked up, her claws tapping against the fence post. Scott found his weight shifting back and forth, making them all sway in time with Derek's steps. He stopped once he realized he was doing it, flushing. 

It seemed like it took forever before Derek was in front of them, hands shoved in his pockets and grinning He looked good. Strong. Happy. The lack of Jeff Davis ruining his life had done him good. 

"You know Mom can't feed you right now, right?" His nose wrinkled slightly. "She doesn't exactly have a kitchen yet. You'll have to come back later." He tipped his head up more than necessary, showing his throat too. 

It made Scott shiver. He knew what that meant now, more than he could have back when it was just a class in school. There was more to it than submission or apology. It felt playful. Happy. Welcoming. Books never could have explained that. 

Allison leaned forward, hooking her booted toes in one of the fence slats to help keep her balance. "We wanted to talk to you."

Surprise made Derek's eyebrows lift. He tilted his head, chin tucked. "What about?" 

Silence. Scott fidgeted, glancing over at Allison and Stiles to see if one of them would answer first. Except they were looking at him, too. Not helpful. And Derek's eyebrows were getting higher and higher and and _oh God_ he was going to get tired of waiting and—

" _Wouldyougooutwithus_?" The question burst from three throats at once, out of sync and mangled. Derek blinked, taking a step backward. 

"On a date," Stiles clarified. "With all of us. All three of us." 

"We really like you." Scott caught Derek's eyes and tried to look certain and adult, and definitely not like his stomach was trying to escape through his throat. " _Really_ like you, I mean."

"And this isn't some _we survived Jeff Davis together so let's make bad choices together_ thing," was Allison's addition. Her eyes glowed gold, and fangs peeked out where her teeth caught her lip, a nervous slip she hadn't managed to control yet. "We talked about it before the fire."

"You don't have to say yes." Scott pulled his shoulders back. Breathed. "We'll still be friends. And pack! We just... Wanted to ask."

Derek stared at them, heartbeat fluttering like the prose from a bad romance novel. "You're going to college in the fall," he finally said. There was a hint there, a bit of give, like he was trying to talk himself out of it. 

Scott wanted to grab it with both hands and cling until Derek gave in. Instead he just said, "Not that far. We'll be home on weekends. We already talked to your mom about full moons, too."

"I'm older than you." Wary, but lighter. Hopeful. Another step between them vanished.

Stiles laughed. "You're not _that_ old."

Another step, and Derek was close enough that Scott's knees brushed his chest. "Jeff Davis tried to kill every person I ever dated."

"Then we're ahead, right?" Allison asked brightly. "He already tried to kill us." She leaned down to kiss Derek's cheek. A second later, Stiles followed suit for the other cheek. Scott pulled Derek's face up so he could reach his lips, since the other two sides were taken. The last bit of distance melted away. 

Derek slotted in between Scott's knees so they could close in around him in a tangle of arms and careful balancing acts. "This is the stupidest idea you three have ever had," he muttered, breaking away to hide his face in the nearest shoulder. Bright pink edged the tops of his ears, and Scott could _smell_ the embarrassment on him underneath the horses and hay and wolf. 

It was kind of perfect.

Which was exactly when a water balloon burst between Derek's shoulders. He jerked in surprise, and the next one hit Scott square in the chest. He flailed for balance, toppling off the fence in a damp mass and dragging everyone with him. Another balloon hit the back of Scott's head, bursting open in a spray of icy water. "Enough with the mushy stuff!" Erica shouted from the other side of the road, holding a bucket of water balloons and a toothy grin. "We have work to do, you lazy asses!"

Scott's claws dug into the dirt. He looked up to see Derek's grin. Allison's eyes flashed yellow, and Stiles bared his teeth. 

"Ready..." Scott breathed, bowing his head. "Set... _Get her_!" 

They surged to their feet, rushing at Erica. She yelped and took off, racing away with water balloons in tow. Derek was hot on her tail, swiping at the bucket handle. Stiles already lagged behind, and Allison was laughing too hard to run straight. Scott grabbed their hands, yanking them faster. Cora shouted encouragement at Erica from atop a pegasus, and Laura howled with laughter.

Scratch the _kind of_.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to ratherastory and queerly_it_is for volunteering and/or deserving to be made into some of Jeff Davis' victims. (I don't even remember what Dan did, but I'm sure it made me cry.) 
> 
> No Jeff Davises were harmed in the making of this fic.


End file.
